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 lip, 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.

This one's a sonnet describing ancient ruins in Egypt (Ozymandias is another name for the pharaoh Ramses II).

We told you the Romantics like ruins. Here's a speaker, reflecting on the ruins of a statue of an ancient king, and he's drawing one big lesson from these ruins: time will get us all, people. There's no use trying to fight it. Even the "king of kings," Ozymandias, is literally reduced to rubble: his "shattered visage" (face) is half buried in the sand.

This is a sonnet, written in fourteen lines, and structured around a "volta," or a turn. Notice how the poem's built on contrasts? There's the ruin of Ozymandias' statue, the empty desert, and Ozymandias' words: "'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'" Of course, when Ozymandias came up with those words, he meant them to scare his enemies: "Look at my awesome statue, people, and despair because I am so much better than you!"

But in the context of the ruins of the statue, Ozymandias' words mean something completely different. Ozymandias is dead. Even his awesome "work"—which is meant to represent his power—is just a bunch of rubble in the sand. So we do despair. Because we're all going to end up like Ozymandias. Dead and in pieces.