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Ozymandiase

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 THE POEM

Ozymandias

OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock’d them, and the heart that fed;

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.

1
 BRIEF HISTORY OF THE POET (PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY)

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), English poet, considered by

many to be among the greatest, and one of the most
influential leaders of the romantic movement. Throughout his
life, Shelley lived by a radically nonconformist moral code. His
beliefs concerning love, marriage, revolution, and politics
caused him to be considered a dangerous immoralist by
some.

He was born on August 4, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham,

Sussex, educated at Eton College and, until his expulsion at
the end of one year, the University of Oxford. With another
student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Shelley had written and
circulated a pamphlet,

The Necessity of Atheism (1811), of which the university

authorities disapproved. He had also published a pamphlet of
BORN: 4 th August 1792, Fiedplace,Horsham, burlesque verse, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret
Sussex, England.
Nicholson (1810).

Died: Shortly after his expulsion, the 19-year-old Shelley married his
8 th July 1822( aged 29) Lerici, kingdom
of Sardinia (now Italy) first wife, Harriet Westbrook, and moved to the Lake District
OCCUPATION: Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist. of England to study and write. Two years later, he published
his first long serious work, Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
LITERARY MOVEMENT: Romantism
(1813). The poem was one result of Shelley's friendship with
SIGNATURE: the British philosopher William Godwin, expressing Godwin's
freethinking Socialist philosophy. Another result of their
friendship was Shelley's relationship with Godwin's daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1814, after
separating from his wife, Shelley briefly toured Europe with Mary whom he married later.

In 1817, Shelley produced Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem that tells a symbolic tale of
revolution.

Shortly before his 30th birthday, Shelley was drowned (July 8, 1822) in a storm while attempting to sail
from Livorno to Le Spezia, Italy. Ten days later, his body was washed ashore.

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 SUBJECT MATTER/MESSAGE /SUMMARY OF THE POEM

Ozymandias is from two Greek words; 'ozy' which means ruler and 'mandas' which also means air or
nothing. Therefore Ozymandias means ruler of the air or nothing.

The poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley tells the partial story of a once mighty king whose works are
now in waste. The poet paints a picture of a once powerful king whose kingdom no longer exists.
Shelley makes use of contrasting imagery to show that Time is the conqueror of all.

The poem’s one stanza is sufficient to sum up the remains of Ozymandias’ life, and from the very
beginning the poet distances himself from the King. Not even able to tell the forgotten story himself,
the narrator must rely on a “traveler from an antique land” (line 1). The word “antique” being very
important because it brings Time into the mind of the reader ve ry early. The land does not have to be
far away, just very old. The first four lines of the poem paint the picture where the remains of
Ozymandias’ kingdom lie. The traveler starts out by describing a human figure made of stone in the
desert. The only thing remaining is the two “vast and trunkless legs of stone” (line 2). The legs being
“vast” yet “trunkless” are two contrasting images. The statue that was there was a huge, important man
no longer stands except for two legs. The legs are in a desert, giving an image of a “vast”, barren land
with just the remains of this statue.

Then the traveler zooms in closer and says that near the statue a head (visage) lies, half buried in the
sand. This offers our most intimate glimpse at the fallen king. A contrast is set up between “shattered”
and “visage” as one describes something in pieces, while that something was once the head of a statue.
The word visage gives an elegant connotation to the image. His face is one of power, yet it is not
described as a beautiful face. There is a “wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command” (line 5). On line 6,
this expression is described as one of “passion,” giving us another contrast. Passions are usually thought
of as “warm” not as a cold sneer. Yet, only this passion survived through time as a picture of the fallen
king. This brings us to another contrast between “survive” and “lifeless.” Survival means to live on, but
the only part of Ozymandias that lives on is his sneering statue. “The hand that mocked them and the
heart that fed” is still another contrast of the king. It is hard to imagine the king being described as a
“heart that fed” when all that we see is a cold sneer, that is almost mocking.

After this, the traveler zooms back out a bit, showing us the words on the statue’s pedestal.

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Lines 10-11)

The inscription has an ironic meaning to it. When King Ozymandias wrote the inscription, he meant to
fear him because of all his “mighty works,” but Time, the true King of Kings, has brought a different
meaning to the inscription. The Mighty should not fear Ozymandias, but they should fear the effects of
Time, as they can see from the bare remains surrounding the statue. Just as Ozymandias’ works were
forgotten with Time, everyone else shall face the same fate, no matter what their might. The traveler
says that nothing remains but the crumbling statue, and that “Round the decay/ Of that colossal Wreck”

3
nothing remains but sand (lines 12-14). The contrasting image of a “colossal Wreck” serves the purpose
of comparing what was before and what remains.

The word “boundless” describes the sand surrounding the statue, but also, it describes Time. Time
knows no bounds – all are subject to time. Ozymandias’ kingdom had a limit on it, and after it was all
said and done, his kingdom now consists of a single, “decaying” statue, “lone” on the sand, while Time’s
kingdom is “boundless.” The limit on Ozymandias’ Kingdom and the boundlessness of Time’s is the most
significant contrast in the poem, for it contains the theme of the poem.

THEMES

OZYMANDIAS' THEME OF MORTALITY VERSES IMMORTALITY

Percy wrote the poem Ozymandias to express to us that human possessions do not mean immortality.
The persona used very strong imagery and irony to put his points across.

The final five lines mock the inscription hammered into the pedestal of the statue. The original
inscription read “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let
him surpass me in some of my exploits.” The idea was that he was too powerful for even the common
king to relate to him; even a mighty king should despair at matching his power. That principle may well
remain valid, but it is undercut by the plain fact that even an empire is a human creation that will one
day pass away. The statue and surrounding desert constitute a metaphor for invented power in the face
of natural power. By Shelley’s time, nothing remains but a shattered bust, eroded “visage,” and
“trunkless legs” surrounded with “nothing” but “level sands” that “stretch far away.” Shelley thus points
out human mortality and the fate of artificial things.

OZYMANDIAS’ THEME OF PRIDE

In the inscription on the pedestal Ozymandias calls himself the "king of kings" while also implying that
his "works" – works of art like the statue, pyramids, that sort of thing – are the best around (10). The
question is, if Ozymandias was pharaoh during a particular prosperous period of Egyptian history, is it at
all possible that he really was the "king of kings"(10)? Could he have been better than any other king
around? Also, there is no indication that the sculptor actually takes pride in his work. Isn’t it therefore
expected that Ozymandias would take much pride in such an artistic wonder? The original inscription
read “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him
surpass me in some ofmy exploits.” The idea was that he was too powerful for even the common king to
relate to him; even a mighty king should despair at matching his power. Ozymandias thinks pretty highly
of himself and of what he's achieved, both politically and artistically. The fact that he commissions this
"colossal" statue with "vast legs" points to his sense of pride, while the statue's fragmentary state
indicates the emptiness (at least in the long term) of Ozymandias's boast.

4
OZYMANDIAS' THEME OF IRONY

The poem Ozymandias seeks to portray the theme of irony. We are told in the poem the sculptor
construct a statue by name Ozymandias with a pedestal glorifying his forever existence. The persona
further says that the statue is broken down with the only remains being the legs on a barren desert.

The irony of the issue here is that we expect to see a lot of developmental projects on this land as the
pedestal portray but we are met with a barren desert. Again the great king of Egypt gets his statue made
in order to immortalize himself. He expects that his name will live till posterity but time plays havoc with
his statue. The statue lies broken and surrounded by a barren desert. His expectation is believed and
thus the whole situation is ironical.

OZYMANDIAS’ THEME OF ART AND CULTURE

"Ozymandias" was inspired by a statue, and it's no surprise that art is one of this poem's themes. The
traveler makes a point of telling us that the statue was made by a really skilled sculptor and the poem as
a whole explores the question of art's longevity. The statue is in part a stand-in or substitute for all kinds
of art (painting, poetry, etc.), and the poem asks us to think not just about sculpture, but about the fate
of other arts as well.

Furthermore, the sculptor himself gets attention and praise that used to be deserved by the king; for all
that Ozymandias achieved has now “decayed” into almost nothing, while the sculpture has lasted long
enough to make it into poetry. In a way, the artist has become more powerful than the king. The only
things that “survive” are the artist’s records of the king’s passion, carved into the stone.

OZYMANDIAS' THEME OF POWER OF NATURE

The word “boundless” describes the sand surrounding the statue of Ozymandias, but also, it describes
Time. Time knows no bounds – all are subject to time. Ozymandias’ kingdom had a limit on it, and after
it was all said and done, his kingdom now consists of a single, “decaying” statue, “lone” on the sand,
while Time’s kingdom is “boundless.” The limit on Ozymandias’ Kingdom and the boundlessness o f
Time’s is the most significant contrast in the poem. The Mighty should not fear Ozymandias, but they
should fear the effects of Time, as they can see from the bare remains surrounding the statue. Just as
Ozymandias’ works were forgotten with Time, everyone else shall face the same fate, no matter what
their might. The traveler says that nothing remains but the crumblingstatue, and that “Round thedecay/
Of that colossal Wreck” nothing remains but sand (lines 12-14). The contrasting image of a “colossal
Wreck” serves the purpose of comparing what was before and what remains. This indicates to us that
nothing can beat time; all are subject to time and thus nature rules. The ruined statue is not only a
monument to remind the magnitude of the king, but also a powerful statement about the triviality of
human beings to the passage of time.

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 RELATED IDEAS

 Autocratic nature of our modern leaders.

 Arrogance of our leaders.
 Selfishness and self-centeredness of leaders.
 Deceit and pretence of our leaders of today as portrayed by Ozymandias in line (11),
"Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!" while in the actual case there was nothing
surrounding his fragmented statue.

LINE BY LINE APPRECIATION OF THE POEM

Lines 1-2

“I met a traveller from an antique land

who said...”

• The poem begins immediately with an encounter between the speaker and a traveler that
comes from an "antique land."

• We're not sure about this traveler. He could be a native of this "antique" land, or just a tourist
returning from his latest trip.

• "Antique" means something really old. The traveler could be coming from a place that is ancient,
almost as if he were time-traveling. Or he could just be coming from a place that has an older
history, like Greece, Rome, or ancient Egypt.

Lines 2-4

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“…Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies…”

• Here the traveler begins his speech. He tells the speaker about a pair of stone legs that are
somehow still standing in the middle of the desert.

• Those legs are huge ("vast") and "trunkless." "Trunkless" means "without a torso," so it's a pair
of legs with no body.

• "Visage" means face; a face implies a head, so we are being told that the head belonging to this
sculpture is partially buried in the sand, near the legs. It is also, like the whole statue,
"shatter'd."

• The image described is very strange: a pair of legs, with a head nearby.

Lines 4-6

“…whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read”

Frown
face &
wrinkle
lip of
ozy……!

• The traveler now gives a fuller description of the "shatter'd visage" lying in the sand.

• As it turns out, the "visage" (or face) isn't completely "shatter'd" because one can still see a
"frown," a "wrinkled lip," and a "sneer."

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 • We still don't know whom this statue represents, but we do know that he was upset about
something because he's frowning and sneering. Maybe he thinks that the sneering makes him
look powerful. It conveys the "cold command" of an absolute ruler. He can do w hat he wants
without thinking of other people. Heck, he probably commanded the sculptor to make the
statue.

• After briefly describing the "visage" (3), the lines shift our attention away from the statue to the
person who made the statue, the "sculptor."

• "Read" here means "understood" or "copied" well. The sculptor was pretty good because he
was able to understand and reproduce exactly – to "read" – the facial features and "passions" of
our angry man. The sculptor might even grasp things about the ruler that the ruler himself
doesn't understand.

• The poem suggests that artists have the ability to perceive the true nature of other people in the
present and not just in the past, with the benefit of hindsight.

• "Tell" is a cool word. The statue doesn't literally speak, but the frown and sneer are so perfectly
rendered that they give the impression that they are speaking, telling us how great the sculptor
was.

Lines 7-8

“Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed”

• The poem now tells us more about the "passions" of the face depicted on the statue.

• Weirdly, the "passions" still survive because they are "stamp'd on these lifeless things." The
"lifeless things" are the fragments of the statue in the desert.

• "Stamp'd" doesn't refer to an ink-stamp, but rather to the artistic process by which the sculptor
inscribed the "frown" and "sneer" on his statue's face. The word could also make you think of
the ruler's power. Had he wanted to, he could have stamped out any of his subjects who
offended him.

• "Mock'd" has two meanings in this passage. It means both "made fun of" and "copied," or
"imitated." "Hand" is a stand-in for the sculptor. So the sculptor both belittled and copied this
man's passions.

• "The heart that fed" is a tricky phrase; it refers to the heart that "fed" or nourished the passions
of the man that the statue represents.

• The passions not only "survive"; they have also outlived both the sculptor ("the hand that
mock'd") and the heart of the man depicted by the statue.

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 • Note the contrast between life and death. The fragments of the statue are called "lifeless
things," the sculptor is dead, and so is the statue's subject. The "passions" though, still "survive."

Lines 9-11

“And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"”

• The traveler tells us about an inscription at the foot of statue which finally reveals to us whom
this statue represents.

• It is "Ozymandias," the figure named in the title. "Ozymandias" was one of several Greek names
for Ramses II of Egypt.

• The inscription suggests that Ozymandias is arrogant, or at least that he has grand ideas about
his own power: he calls himself the "king of kings."

• Ozymandias also brags about his "works." Maybe he's referring to the famous temples he
constructed at Abu Simbel or Thebes. He could also be calling attention to the numerous
colossal statues of him, such as the one described in this poem.

• Ozymandias's speech is ambiguous here. On the one hand he tells the "mighty" to "despair"
because their achievements will never equal his "works." On the other hand, he might be telling
the "mighty" to "despair" as a kind of warning, saying something like "Don't get your hopes up
guys because your statues, works, political regimes, etc. will eventually be destroyed or fade
away, with nothing to recall them but a dilapidated statue half-buried in the sand."

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Lines 12-14

“Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

• After the traveler recites the inscription, he resumes his description of the statue and the
surrounding area.

• We are reminded again that "nothing" remains besides the head, legs, and pedestal; as if we
didn't know the statue has been destroyed, the traveler tells us again that it is a "colossal
wreck."

• The very size of the statue – "colossal" – emphasizes the scope of Ozymandias's ambitions as
well; it's almost as if because he thinks he's the "king of kings" he also has to build a really big
statue.

• To complement the "decay" of the statue, the traveler describes a desolate and barren desert
that seems to go on forever: the "sands stretch far away."

• The statue is the only thing in this barren, flat desert. There was probably once a temple or
something nearby, but it's long gone. The "sands" are "lone," which means whatever else used
to be "beside" the statue has been destroyed or buried.

• Several words in these lines start with the same letter; for example "besides," "boundless," and
"bare"; "remains" and "round"; "lone" and "level"; "sands" and "stretch." This is to emphasize
condition and situation of the statue of the king Ozymandias in the desert.

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Style/Techniques/Poetic Devices

IRONY

Line 11: ''look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Ozymandias, the great king of Egypt gets his statue made in order to immortalize himself. He expects
that his name will live till posterity. But time plays havoc with his statue. The statue lies broken and is
surrounded by a barren desert. His expectation is believed and thus the whole situation is ironical.

METAPHOR

Line 8: The "heart" is the organ most often linked to feelings and passions; it "fed" the passions d epicted
in the statue. Because the heart didn't literally "feed" the passions, "fed" here is a metaphor

AMBIGUITY

This line is ambiguous

Line 9: Describes the base of the statue and the boast engraved on it. Line 11: The inscription refers to
"works," which might be a reference to other statues, works of art, or monuments commissioned by
Ozymandias

PARADOX

Line 6-7: The sculptor was pretty good at representing Ramses’ "passions" in the statue, which are
"stamp'd" or engraved in stone. Even though the stones are "lifeless," they paradoxically give life to the
"passions" that still "survive." There are three words in these two lines that start with "s"; the use of
multiple words starting with the same letter is

ALLITERATION

Line 13-14: We're assuming this statue wasn't always in the middle of nowhere – there must have been
some kind of temple or pyramid nearby. Not anymore; the area around the statue is "bare" and the
desert is "lone," or empty. The traveler calls our attention to the barrenness of the desert through the
extensive use of alliteration (beginning multiple words with the same letter): "boundless and bare’’, “lone
and level, sands stretch

SYNEDOCHE

Line 2: The traveler describes two "legs of stone" with no torso, our first indication that the statue is
partly destroyed. Line 4: The head of the statue is "shatter'd" and partially buried in the sand. "Visage" is

11
a stand-in for the statue's head. (The use of one part of any object or entity to describe the whole is
called synecdoche.)

TONE OF THE POEM

The tone of the poem is ironic but the overall tone is that of bleak.

MOOD OF THE POEM

In Ozymandias, the persona presents the mood of mixed feelings. In lines (1-5), the persona expresses the
mood of fear. That is any reader who reads lines 1-5 is grieved with fear. In the rest of the lines the
persona presents the mood of uncertainty and despair thus the persona did not detailed with how things
unfold in the poem. This situation left the reader uncertain as to what the portrayed towards his people.

Structure and language

Form

Ozymandias is a sonnet (a poem of 14 lines), although it doesn't have the same, simple rhyme scheme
or punctuation that most sonnets have. Some lines are split by full stops and the rhyme is irregular at
times. It is written in iambic pentameter, which Shakespeare used widely in his sonnets.

Structure

The first line and a half up to the colon are the narrator's words, the rest are those of the traveller he
meets. There are no clear stanzas as such. Instead, it is one, 14-line (sonnet) block of text that is split up
with lots of punctuation throughout.

The poem is written in pentameter, meaning there are five (penta-) groups of two syllables in each line.
Shelley's poem makes use of iamb. Iambic pentameter means that each line contains five feet or groups,
each of which contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in this line:

Half-sunk, a shatt-er'd vis-age lies, whose frown (4)

Many of the lines in the poem, however, refuse to conform to this pattern. Take line 12 for example:

No-thing be-side re-mains: round the de-cay

The line begins with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable; this is called a trochee, and
it's the reverse of an iamb. After the initial trochee, we get two iambs, but then we go back to a trochee
with "round the" finally ending with an iamb; there's no name for this jumping around! This refusal to
conform to any specific meter is evident throughout the poem, and makes it difficult to classify with a
simple formula like iambic pentameter

Sound

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Although it doesn't have an easy, memorable rhyme scheme, the poem is powerful when read aloud.
The end of lines one and three rhyme ("land”/”sand") but so do the first and last words of line three
("stand” / “sand") which gives it extra power. Lines 12 and 14 also rhyme and words such as
("decay”/”away") mean that the poem ends with a feeling of mystery and emptiness. The overall rhyme
scheme of the poem is; ABABACDCEDEFEF.

Imagery

Ancient Egyptian ruin - head of statue

Shelley creates a memorable image of this ""vast"" and once great statue, now in ruins. He also places it
in the middle of a huge desert with nothing else around it, which highlights its fall from grace. What was
once so magnificent - a symbol of the king's great power - is now ""sunk... shattered... lifeless"". We
have no sympathy whatsoever with the statue or the king though, due to some of Shelley's descriptions:
""sneer of cold command... hand that mocked them"" and the arrogance of the words displayed at the
bottom.

PERSONAL RESPONSE
The poet’s choice of diction and the use of symbols and imagery make the poem very difficult for us to
understand. The poet makes use of contrast a lot to explore so many issues within the limited space of
14 lines poem. This style of the poet makes the poem a unique one which needs much energy and effort
to understand. This poem, even though difficult to understand, teaches so many moral lessons and has
total relevance to our contemporary political and social lives. These things as a result, influenced us to
associate ourselves with the poet’s point of view. In short, we like this poem for its contemporary
relevance to our modern society.

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 REFERENCE

Davon Ferrara (2002), Introduction to Literary

Criticism:personal.centenary.edu/῀dferrara/portfolio/ozymandias.htm/

http://www.shmoop.com/ozymandias/rhyme-form-meter.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/section2.rhtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english-literature/poetrycharactervoice/ozymandias

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