English 12Chu
Name:______
Period:______
Date:______
Percy Bysshe Shelley Poems
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs[1] of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage[2] 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[3] 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.
Directions:
Read each question carefully and then respond to each thoughtfully, correctly and completely. Responses are worth two points each.
- Even in the brief space of a sonnet, Shelley suggests a number of narrative frames. How many speakers do you hear in this poem? Summarize what each one says.
- Irony is a discrepancy between expectations and reality. What did Ozymandias expect people to see when they looked at his “works”? What do they actually see?
- According to the poem, what was the sculptor’s attitude toward the subject of his artwork?
Ode to the West Wind
I
O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Directions:
Read each question carefully and then respond to each thoughtfully, correctly and completely. Responses are worth two points each.
- What is the central image in each of the first three sections? What emotions does this image evoke?
- How are sections IV and V different in tone and emphasis from the first three?
- How can the win be both “destroyer and preserver” (line 14)? Cite lines to support your ideas.
- Why do you think the speaker identifies with the wind so intensely?
- How do you explain the paradox, or seeming contradiction, that words are like “ashes and sparks” (line 67)?
- What lines of this ode can you connect with the grief of a parent who has just seen a child die? What comfort does the parent find?
[1] trunkless legs: that is, the legs without the rest of the body
[2] visage: noun face
[3] hand that mocked them, and the heart: the hand of the sculptor who, with his art, derided the passions to which Ozymandias gave himself wholeheartedly