Review of “Ozymandias” (1818)
Percy Bysshe Shelley (writer).
A traveller reports on a statue of Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE) in situ.
A prime example of the original Romanticism that is neither obscurantist nor authoritarian. Shelley apparently based the poem on a description of a real statue of the pharaoh, a statue called the Younger Memnon.
References here: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), “The Coliseum” (1833).