Read the passage from Ozymandias.

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.

Which word from the poem best summarizes the overall mood of the poem?

king

despair

decay

colossal

I think the answer would be "despair" because the quotation is talking about a place that has nothing which makes the mood sort of sad.

King is the word that sticks out at most. Despair, decay, and colossal all invoke the same concept together as being elements below the king. King is able to summarize the mood in a way that leaves nothing of similar grandeur around Ozymandias. While colossal may stick out in a similar way to king, colossal is used to describe the wreck that Ozymandias tells all those mighty and despair to notice. The self-proclaimed title "King of kings" is what sets the mood of the poem on a very grand level.