![]() Shelley coined several other powerful phrases in this poem and the final lines have entered the language and have been used for the titles of several books and games. It could imply that his subsequent obscurity was a punishment from God - a subject that Shelley considered in several of his other poems. Ozymandias calls himself 'king of kings' - a phrase taken from Biblical language - which smacks somewhat of arrogant pride. The poem is written in iambic pentameter, but there are several variations in the pattern, including reversed first feet ('Nothing beside remains' and 'Tell that its sculptor…'). In this sonnet, the first part sets up the frame narrative and then describes the statue and the second part ironically relates the king's words and adds the final description of the desert setting. Most sonnets break into two parts: an 'octet' (the first eight lines) and a 'sextet' (the last six lines), with the second part commenting on the first. The poem is a sonnet - a fourteen-line single stanza form that originated in Italian love poetry and that was popularised in England by Shakespeare. 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, stamp'd on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half-sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone The description of the statue is a meditation on the fragility of human power and on the effects of time. Smith is using the word generically to represent a great and ancient city.Shelley's poem imagines a meeting between the narrator and a 'traveller' who describes a ruined statue he - or she - saw in the middle of a desert somewhere. It was one of the great cities of antiquity and at two different periods was the largest city in the world. Ozymandias - Smith initially titled his poem the same as Shelley’s later, he re-titled it “OnĪ Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscriptionīabylon - The name of the famous city on the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. Little of Pi-Ramesses Aa-nakhtu survives, but as you can see in the pictures above, the statue does not actually stand by itself in the desert. Both Shelley and Smith were responding to a drawing of the statue that did not include all of the background. Lone and level sands - This is not quite accurate. Note that Shelley is using this verb in a transitive way. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.” It may also be a literary reference to Diodorus Siculus, an ancient Greek historian (he was from Sicily, which was ethnically and culturally Greek at the time), who wrote in his massive forty-volume Biblioteca Historica that Rameses’ statue bore the inscription “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. Traveller - This is a bit of poetic license, as no such traveller existed. To make the competition fair, both poems were published anonymously because Shelley was much better known as a poet. Both were published in Leigh Hunt’s weekly magazine The Examiner a few weeks apart in January 1818. The archeological discovery of this city and the broken statue inspired Shelley and Smith to write these sonnets in a friendly competition. He also engaged in a major building program, which involved temples, palaces, and even a whole new capital city, Pi-Rameses Aa-nakhtu. During his rule (1279-1213 B.C.E.), Egypt became the dominant military power in the region. Rameses was one of the greatest rulers of the ancient world. Ozymandias - A Greek name for the great Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II, also called the Great (c. The lone and level sands stretch far away. Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The wonders of my hand. The citys gone! I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,Īnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Of Rameses the Great inspired the following sonnets in 1817: ![]()
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