The Sonnet "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a unique sonnet in its structure and meaning. Instead of a regular structured sonnet dealing with love or death, Shelly shows a story of a fallen empire in "an antique land" destroyed completely except for one sculpture. This lonely sculpture symbolizes his believe that the arts will be left and revered when all else fails, even the most powerful King cannot leave an influence as great as an artist.
             The sonnet structure contains the fourteen lines and the steady iambic pentameter meter, but it lacks a rhyme scheme. It follows neither the English of Italian sonnet rules for rhyme sequence, but has an ABACADED FEGHGH rhyme. The absence of the rhyme patterns apparent in most sonnets might be deliberate to help Shelley separate his sonnet from others. This is his way to show the impression art or a King will leave behind, not tell of love or death like most sonnets. Also adding to the difference of this sonnet is the organization. Instead of a problem and solution or examples and a conclusion structure, Shelley's is more a story-like sentence weaving all its lines together, without dividing the sonnet into quatrains and a couplet, or an octave and sestet.
             Shelley's poem revolves around a shattered sculpture of an Egyptian king with "[n]othing beside" it. The image of the broken artifact left alone in the barren desert helps evoke a damaged feeling for the city the sculpture belonged to. The "[t]wo vast and trunkless legs" on top of the inscribed platform are the only part still standing while "[t]he hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed" them, both belonging to the King, are scattered bits in the desert. The almighty King who called himself the "King of Kings" and his empire are gone, only the art remains to be described. Only the short quote on the stone remains to be read. All else is gone. To...