Their individual poems, and submit them to some sort of judging, often publication. It was not uncommon for poets at this time to challenge each other to contests in which the two poets would select a topic or title, write Among these was a poet and novelist named Horace Smith, whom Shelley admired for his ability to write and effectively manage his money. Shelley kept company with an impressive array of writers, poets, and philosophers in his day. This poem is widely anthologized, and is featured in the Norton Critical Edition (2nd edition) of Shelley's work titled Shelley's Poetry and Prose (2002). Ultimately, the poem shows that political leadership is fleeting and forgotten, no matter how hard a ruler may try to preserve his own greatness. But Shelley was also a political writer, and "Ozymandias" provides insight into the poet's views on power, fame, and political legacy. "Ozymandias" describes an unusual subject matter for Shelley, who usually wrote about Romantic subjects such as love, nature, heightened emotion, and hope. Time and the elements have reduced the great statue to a pile of rubble. Once a great symbol of power and strength, the statue has become a metaphor for the ultimate powerlessness of man. In the poem, the narrator relates what someone else described to him about pieces of a broken statue lying in a desert. It first appeared in book form in Shelley's Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue with Other Poems (1819). Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote "Ozymandias" in 1817, and it was first published in the Examiner in 1818.
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