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In the poem, Shelley describes a crumbling statue of Ozymandias as a way to portray the transience of political power and to praise art’s ability to preserve the past.
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The speaker recalls having met a traveler “from an antique land,” who told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native country. Two vast legs of stone stand without a body, and near them a massive, crumbling stone head lies “half sunk” in the sand. The traveler told the speaker that the frown and “sneer of cold command” on t...
“Ozymandias” is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual for a sonnet of this era; it does not fit a conventional Petrarchan pattern, but instead interlinks the octave (a term for the first eight lines of a sonnet) with the sestet (a term for the last six lines), by gradually replacing old rh...
This sonnet from 1817 is probably Shelley’s most famous and most anthologized poem—which is somewhat strange, considering that it is in many ways an atypical poem for Shelley, and that it touches little upon the most important themes in his oeuvre at large (beauty, expression, love, imagination). Still, “Ozymandias” is a masterful sonnet. Essential...
Study Guide. Summary & Analysis. When Percy Bysshe Shelley first wrote “Ozymandias” in 1817, he did so as part of a competition with his friend and fellow poet, Horace Smith. The two men each agreed to write a sonnet on the subject of Ozymandias, which is the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian king otherwise known as Rameses II.
Mar 11, 2016 · Over a century before T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Shelley presents a land laid waste and a pessimistic view of human civilisation. ‘Ozymandias’ displays the same self-analysis at the level of whole civilisations: will our own survive, when this one did not? Analysis. It is worth bearing in mind the context of ‘Ozymandias’.
May 15, 2024 · Overview of the Poem. Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest British poets of the nineteenth century, wrote the epic poem “Ozymandias.” It was first published under the pen name “Gilrastes” in 1818 in The Examiner of London. This poem is a profound reflection on the transience of human strength and the certainty of death and forgetfulness.
‘Ozymandias’ is one of Shelley's best poems, portraying a decaying statue in a desert with the inscription “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair”. This stark imagery contrasts the once-mighty ruler's declaration, emphasizing the fleeting nature of human achievements.
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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.
