Which poet is best known for the poem Ozymandias?

• A. William Wordsworth
• B. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• D. John Keats

Answer: (B)

Ozymandias is a quintessential Romantic meditation on power and time, and it is written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem tells of a traveler who encounters a ruined statue in the desert, with the pedestal bearing the boast, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair!” The contrast between that bold claim and the shattered remains around it creates irony: human power and ego are temporary, while the desert and the statue’s broken fragments endure. The inscription is a deliberate boast that, in the context of the scene, reveals the folly of hubris rather than a true triumph of the ruler. Shelley uses vivid imagery and a concise, controlled form—a fourteen-line poem—to reinforce this meditation on permanence versus impermanence.

This distinguishes it from the other poets listed, who are known for different focuses: Wordsworth often centers on nature and everyday memory in a gentler moral sense; Coleridge is renowned for dreamlike imagery and opium-edged imagination; Keats excels in lush, sensuous odes about beauty and mortality.