Ozymandias

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Exemplar for Unit 2 : Poetry Ozymandias by P.B. Shelley Ozymandias I 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 shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive (stamped on these lifeless things) The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 8My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! 9 Nothing beside remains.

Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. The narrative position distances the reader from the subject 3 the narrator is retelling a traveller 9s tale Vocabulary of size and solidity contrasts with language of destruction Forbidding details of the statue 9s appearance indicate the character of Ozymandias Reference to the accuracy of the sculptor and his art perhaps links with the poet and the poem Whose hand and heart? Ozymandias 9 3 he has not survived despite the mockery of and feeding on his people, ... more. less.

or the sculptor 9s 3 a subversive artist creating the official portrait? Ozymandias 9 defiant voice is recorded 3 a mighty act of hubris which the reader already knows is forlorn. This is confirmed by the emphatic short sentence. The poem ends with vocabulary of wreckage and isolation 3 all that is left of Ozymandias 9 pride, reinforcing the irony of the poem The poem is a sonnet; the octave establishes the character of the king and the state of his statue in the desert, while the sestet drives home the irony by directly comparing Ozymandias 9 hubristic challenge to the gods with the wreckage of his statute, abandoned in the desert. The name of the figure is given only here 4 the condition of the statue is given precedence in the octave. This also recalls the importance of the double narrative, a narrator retelling a story he has heard from a traveller, suggesting that Ozymandias and his story are little known and his former kingdom seldom visited 3 a far cry from his self-proclaimed status as 8king of kings 9. Note the way the reversal of the prevailing rhythm gives particular emphasis to 8Stand 9 ( l.3 ) 8Look 9 ( l.11 ) and 8Nothing 9 ( l.13 ), while the double stress 8Half sunk 9 ( l.4 ) em hasises the near-obliteration of the statue.

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