The Traveler's poem to "I"

After researching context, similar to Rebecca in her post, Percy Shelley never saw the statue since the statute of never lasted nor did its inscription so it becomes apparent that Shelley wrote this inspired by hearsay rather than seeing it visually himself. I bring this up because his sonnet opens up with “I met a traveler” in the first line then quickly shifts to the traveler’s perspective, “Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone …” in the second line. I think this transition is reflective of how this poem was inspired. So instead of the speaker (Shelley) giving a description the narrative is actually produced via the traveler.  The perspective of the traveler that the poem assumes for the remaining lines approaches the statue like he is on foreign land “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone /Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, /Half sunk, …” He describes the statue as if it’s a first experience because the person he is telling to has never experienced it it seems.  The ellipsis in the third line seems like a little jump or a fragment in a stream of consciousness occurs during the description. Perhaps this fragmentation is representative of the fragmented, “trunkless legs  of stone”