Which Romantic poet wrote the poem 'Ozymandias'?

The Romantic poet who wrote the poem Ozymandias was Percy Bysshe Shelley. The sonnet was first published in The Examiner, a London newspaper, on 11 January 1818, and it presents the ruined remains of a once-powerful ruler in an empty desert.

Ozymandias is the Greek name associated with the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. Shelley’s poem describes a broken statue whose inscription boasts of the ruler’s greatness, while the surrounding sands reveal that time has erased his empire. That contrast gives the poem its central theme: political power and human pride cannot withstand decay.

The poem grew out of a friendly writing competition between Shelley and Horace Smith, who wrote separate sonnets on the same subject. Shelley was inspired by reports of the colossal statue fragment known as the Younger Memnon, which had been taken from the Ramesseum at Thebes. A common mix-up is attributing the poem to Lord Byron, John Keats, or William Wordsworth, all important Romantic-era poets, but Ozymandias is specifically Shelley's work.