The crumbling statue, "decay," "colossal wreck," "boundless and bare / … lone and level sands" all communicate thematic ideas of time, change, and mutability.
"Ozymandias" are two sonnets about King Ramsesses II of Egypt, published in 1818. Their main theme is how time and nature destroy everything, even the greatest empires. In this excerpt, Ramsesses II is describing how he is seeing the grandeur of his reign and his feats fall into oblivion.
Shelley started writing the poem in 1817, after learning that the British Museum's had acquired a piece of a statue of Ramesses II from the 13th century BC.
