This sonnet is written to express to the speaker that possessions don't mean immortality - ironically, the king who seemed to think that his kingdom would remain under his statue's egotistical gaze forever teaches us this through his epitaph. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" becomes good advice, though in an opposite meaning than the king intended, for it comes to mean that despite all the power and might one acquires in the course of one's life, material possessions will not last forever. In the end, the King's "works" are nothing, ....