Ozymandias (poem)

Ozymandias is a sonnet written by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). In antiquity, Ozymandias was an alternative name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the announcement of the British Museum's acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the thirteenth-century BCE, and some scholars consider that Shelley was inspired by this. The 7.25-ton fragment of the statue's head and torso had been recovered in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses at Thebes by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823).

The poem explores the fate of history and the ravages of time—that all prominent men and the empires they build are impermanent and their legacies fated to decay and oblivion. Shelley contrasted this fate to the lasting power of art.

Ozymandias in Supervolcano
Kelly Ferguson, along with her former department chairman Prof. Geoff Rheinburg and a number of other geologists, went on an exploratory expedition to Helena, Montana. Shortly after arriving by helicopter, Rheinburg was moved to loudly recite the final lines of Ozymandias where the boast of the king of kings about his mighty works is surrounded by vast, empty desert. Ferguson was deeply moved, the poem matching well the impermanent works surrounding them.