I rather like this. Sonnets entrance me anyway, and this one happens to have something interesting to say. I think that it's the reflection on human mortality beside nature that I like. It is a little pompous in language, but that's forgiveable, considering when it was written. For some reason it is somewhat reminiscent of Roald Dahl's style. Perhaps this is related to the desert imagery. The reader may recall, if they have read Going Solo, the wonderful visual description of the Sinai Desert given near the beginning of the penultimate chapter of that book.

Let it here be recorded, my literary dislikes include fantasy, "save the planet" junk, animal stories and sentimental warbling from undereducated female arts graduates. Ozymandias certainly comes into the category of down-to-earth male-authored grit.