Overanalysis in action: Ozymandias

You have probably wondered what the hell the poem Ozymandias is about. And if you don't, you probably think you do but really don't. But worry not! I am here to decipher it for you. Watch as I unravel the mystery!

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Travellers, as we are wont to know, rarely come from antique lands, and thus we know little of them. What we must assume is that this land is filled with various trinkets of questionable worth hocked by men in scratchy suits hoping to make the money to feed their families for the next day.

This person, in the poem, shows himself to be one of those hucksters, formulating a complex and exciting imagery of a woe begotten empire, that nothing else remains of. To be fair, this person does a marvelous job, making the story almost worth the purchase itself.

As he mentions the end, you can mentally see him gesturing to the items mentioned at the beginning of his tale; a pair of stone legs, smaller than you'd might expect from his description, the chipped off bit of face from a half-rate statue, and then, on a small novelty pedestal, you can indeed see Ozymandias' proclamation written, albeit in poorly transcribed cuneiform.

After hearing this, we must assume the poet apologized, but did not want to own the remnants of a statue for the king of ants, and continued on one's way, later stealing his diatribe and using it for one's own poetry, trying to pass it off as insightful and brilliant.