Who Said: Two Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone s1
Edgar 2
Sean Edgar
Mr. Youngs
British Literature
5 June 2013
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
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:
`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".
Explication of “Ozymandias”
Ozymandias also known as Ramesses II was a great and powerful king of Egypt from 1279-1213 B.C. As king, Ozymandias made sure that people knew who he was and how powerful he was. He did this by creating sculptures of himself. The poem “Ozymandias” is about one traveller telling his story of seeing one of these sculptures in present time. The writer dramatizes the past and present in the poem to emphasize the moral of the poem.
The poem starts introducing a “traveller from an antique land” (1). Shelley uses his great use of words right from the start. He uses antique, perhaps because of what antique implies. Antique could suggest something old and valuable, perhaps referring to the traveller or the traveller’s words. The writer then gives the readers an image, the traveller says, “Two vast and trunk less legs of stone stand in the desert” (2/3). This is the opening line to the traveller’s story, and it paints a picture of ruins in the readers mind. He goes on to say that below the legs lays a “shattered visage” (4). Visage is a synonym for face, but it is Shelley’s use of diction that is intriguing. The word visage looks and sounds like the word vision, so maybe the use of “visage” suggests that the face is looking at you or the traveller. The writer then goes into further description of the “visage,” in particular the mouth. Shelly gives us three adjectives, “frown,” “wrinkled lip,” and “sneer” (4-5). They could have been condensed in to one word but it seems that the writer wants to emphasize the “cold command” of Ozymandias. The “cold command could be referring to how Ozymandias ruled while he was king. Shelley then shifts the poem to the sculptor. The writer says, “cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read” (6). Here the writer gives homage to the underrated sculptor who captured Ozymandias’ facial expressions so well. He then says, “Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things” (7). This may suggest that the sculptor’s art lives longer that Ozymandias.
The poem shifts now to Ozymandias and his arrogance. He tells what is on the pedestal and it reads, “ My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” (10-11). This may be the high point of the poem. To begin Ozymandias uses a phrase most frequently at the time used to describe a king like David, “king of kings.” David is the same David of the biblical story David and Goliath. This shows the arrogance of Ozymandias and how he feels he will never die, in a figurative sense. Ozymandias then boasts about his empire, which at the time of his reign was powerful and beautiful. This is ironic because now his empire like his statue is a “colossal wreck” (13). To finish his poem Shelley comes back to the present time to paint the reader another image. In this image, like that of the “trunk less legs,” there is nothing left of Ozymandias empire. There is just sand and pieces of his statue. In the last three lines Shelley’s diction is strong. He uses three adjectives all describing the statue and the land around it, “decay”, “bare”, and “lone” (12-14). They point out the connection between the sculpture and Ozymandias’ empire.
In Shelley’s “Ozymandias” he implies a moral, it is that no matter who you are or how much you have, you will die and fade like the rest of us in this world.