Both Shelley and Robinson present death as something which is inevitable and inescapable, regardless of power, riches or the respect of others. However, while Shelley's speaker almost revels in the fact that the boasts of Ozymandias have been proven to be hollow in his death, Robinson presents a very different picture: a man who appears not to care for riches and power and who sees death as an escape from personal misery. Both Ozymandias and Richard Cory focus on powerful individuals who inevitably meet death. Richard Cory is set in a the fictional village of Tilbury and all his work are fictional whereas Ozymandias is about real life events from "an antique land.".
Both poems have been influenced by the poets life and experiences. The two poems were wrote in two very different periods of times. Ozymandias was wrote in around 1792 whereas Richard Cory was wrote around 1924. The difference in time periods make Edward Arlington Robinson and Percy Bysshe Shelley write in very different forms. Edward Arlington Robinson liked to work with themes which included personal failure, artistic endeavour, materialism, and the inevitability of change, his most characteristic theme is his curiosity about what lies behind the social mask of character. Comparing this to Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was a romantic poet. This meant he was fascinated by in the ancient world. He also like to write his poems in elaborate, elegant stanza form.
Both poets choose regular forms with consistent patterns of rhythm and metre. Both poets choose to write in iambic pentameter, which contributes to the sense of conversation through which each poet conveys his ideas about death.
However, there is a significant difference in the ways the use form to address the issue of death. Ozymandias is written in the form of a sonnet. Ozymandias is wrote in a sonnet because Shelley wants to be very expressive and enable him to explore the differences between art and political power.