While you've probably heard of iambic pentameter, Shelley's poem makes it really hard to use that designation. The poem is written in pentameter, meaning there are five (penta-) groups of two syllables in each line. The entire rhyme scheme can be schematized as follows: ABABACDCEDEFEF.
Finally, instead of a concluding couplet we get another EF group.
For lines 9-12, the rhyme scheme is EDEF, rather than EFEF. But then the poem gets strange: at lines 5-8 the rhyme scheme is ACDC, rather than the expected CDCD. The rhyme scheme is initially Shakespearean, as the first four lines rhyme ABAB. It is Petrarchan in that the poem is structured as a group of eight lines (octave) and a group of six lines (the sestet). Shelley's sonnet is a strange mixture of these two forms. The Shakespearean sonnet is in iambic pentameter and follows the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The other major sonnet form is the Shakespearean or English sonnet it too has fourteen lines, but is structured as a series of three quatrains (of four lines each) and a concluding couplet (consisting of two consecutive rhyming lines). While the rhyme scheme of the octave is ABBA ABBA, the rhyme scheme of the sestet is more flexible two of the most common are CDCDCD and CDECDE. The ninth line – the first line of the sestet – marks a shift in the direction of the poem and is frequently called the "turn" or, for you Italian scholars, the volta.
The octave often proposes a problem or concern that the sestet resolves or otherwise engages. The Petrarchan sonnet is structured as an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, whose ideal form is often attributed to the great Italian poet Petrarch. "Ozymandias" takes the form of a sonnet in iambic pentameter.
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