From the second line on the reader is painted a vivid picture with words such as vast and trunkless.half sunk.shattered own and wrinkled lip.sneer of cold command.this is a pretty damning description of Ozymandias (Greek name for an Egyptian pharaoh called Rameses II, 1300BCE) and reflects Shelley's own thoughts on those who crave and wield power. Shelley's evocative language creates some very powerful images. It is this person's narrative that describes the huge statue in the sands of the desert, a former monument of a great leader, now in pieces and forgotten. The reader is effectively listening in to a conversation between two people, one recently returned from a journey through an ancient country. This was highly unusual for a sonnet at the time and reflects the poet's innovative thinking. Shelley uses the first person pronoun "I" to begin his sonnet then cleverly switches the focus to a third person, a traveler, whose words are contained in the remaining thirteen lines. The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The title Ozymandias refers to an alternate name of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1817 as part of a poetry contest with a friend and had it published in The Examiner in 1818 under the pen name Glirastes. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Ozymandias is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,Īnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Overall, this sonnet paints a picture of an egotistical character who thought himself without rival but who was cruel to his people.
Shelley's poem encapsulates metaphorically the outcome of such tyrannical wielding of power - no leader, King, despot, dictator or ruler can overcome time. 'Ozymandias' is a political poem at heart, written at a time when Napoleon's domination of Europe was coming to an end and another empire, that of Great Britain's, was about to take over. A sensitive nature poet, he wrote the oft-quoted ' To a Skylark' and 'The Flower That Smiles Today', but he could pen political verse too, notably 'England' in 1819.
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