"Ozymandias"

Nothing does last. Not even the Everlasting Gobstoppers that Willy Wonka came up with. People are born into the world and the second they are they start to decline. In the poem "Ozymandias," the speaker ends the story on a note that tells the reader that "nothing lasts," which is the theme of this poem. The speaker is reminiscing about a travel that he took to "an antique land" where he saw a statue in ruins. It had been decaying for some time and was now "boundless and bare." The words that are used to describe the state of the statue give the reader a mental image of what it looks like and how things in the world will not last. The traveler that the main speaker met says a few words at the beginning of the poem. These are the words that describe the mental image to the reader. What lasts is the writing that is written on the statue and the "passion" of the sculptor. Words that are written down, in stone, seem to last forever. The words on the statue will and have outlasted man and the buildings. It does not matter who is more powerful or who isn’t, eventually everything will be gone. Nothing is permanent.