Ozymandias: Power Ground to Dust

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in January 1818. Fourteen lines, and only the opening line or so comes from the speaker directly. • A speaker says he met a traveller from an antique land. • Everything after that is the traveller talking: he once came across a ruined statue of a great king, lying in the sand. • The king left words of his own carved into the stone, and the poem lets us read them. The question that drives the whole poem: what is left of power once the powerful are gone?

What the traveller saw

The traveller describes the ruin piece by piece, moving from the stone to the empty desert. Put what he describes in the order the poem gives it.

• Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, still standing
• A shattered face, half sunk in the sand, with a frown and a sneer
• The sculptor who read that ruler so well and carved what he saw
• The words carved on the pedestal in the voice of the king himself
• Bare, level sand stretching away in every direction

Shelley at work

Five terms carry most of what there is to say about how this poem is built:

Read the face of the ruler

These lines describe the broken face of the statue. Tap the phrase that shows what kind of ruler this was: one who gave orders without warmth.

• Half sunk a shattered visage lies,
• whose frown,
• /
• And wrinkled lip,
• and sneer of cold command,
• /
• Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

A story at second hand

The king is heard only through a traveller, who is heard only through the speaker. What does that layered telling add to the poem?

• It shrinks the mighty king to a story passed between strangers, far from where his power once was
• It proves the statue is real, because the traveller saw it with his own eyes
• It makes the reader feel sorry for the king, because he is now so far away
• It adds variety, so that a short poem does not get boring with one voice

Hear the emptiness

These are the last lines of the poem. Tap the TWO phrases where alliteration slows the line down and stretches the empty desert out.

• Nothing beside remains.
• Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck,
• boundless and bare
• /
• The lone and level sands
• stretch far away.

Who was Shelley?

Shelley was a Romantic poet and a political radical. He was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for a pamphlet arguing for atheism, and he spent his life attacking kings, priests and anyone who ruled by force. Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, one of the most powerful rulers of the ancient world. Shelley wrote the sonnet in 1817 in a friendly contest with his friend Horace Smith, who wrote a sonnet on the same subject. Britain at the time was ruled by a monarchy Shelley despised, still fighting off calls for reform after the long wars with France.

Make context count

A student writes: "Ozymandias was written in 1817." It earns nothing. Which rewrite turns it into useful context?

• As a radical who hated tyranny, Shelley lets a mighty ruler crumble into sand, a warning to the rulers of his own day
• Ozymandias was written in 1817 and published early the following year, in January 1818
• Shelley wrote it in a contest with Horace Smith, who chose the same ancient king as his subject
• Shelley was expelled from Oxford, married twice and died young in a boating accident in Italy

Three partners from the cluster

You compare the printed poem with one other from the cluster, from memory. Settle on partners for Ozymandias now. Here is what happens in three of them:

Partner for the question

The exam prints Ozymandias and asks how poets present the power of NATURE. Which partner gives you the strongest comparison?

• Extract from The Prelude, where a mountain dwarfs the boy, just as time and sand outlast the king
• London, where Blake shows the misery that the powerful cause in the streets of the city
• My Last Duchess, where a proud ruler controls everyone around him, including his wife
• The Charge of the Light Brigade, where soldiers ride into the guns because of an order

Two proud rulers

A student pairs Ozymandias with My Last Duchess. Tap the ONE sentence in their paragraph that genuinely compares the two poems.

• Ozymandias is about a broken statue lying in a desert.
• Both rulers condemn themselves in their own words, but the boast of Ozymandias now stands over ruins, whereas the Duke still holds his power.
• My Last Duchess is a much longer poem than the sonnet.
• Both poems were written in the nineteenth century.

Compare the power

Exam practice. Compare how poets present the power of rulers in Ozymandias and in ONE other poem from Power and Conflict. Write at least 150 words.

• A shared point covering both poems
• A short quotation and a named method from each
• The effect of each method
• How the two attitudes differ
• Context only where it explains

Where the poem turns

A strong paragraph on the volta in Ozymandias moves from what changes, through the evidence, to why it matters. Put its sentences in order.

• At line nine the poem turns from the broken stone to the words on the pedestal.
• The king commands the mighty to look on his works and despair.
• The irony is that there are no works left to look at, only a colossal wreck.
• The final image of lone and level sands answers the boast with nothing at all.
• For a radical like Shelley, this is a warning that every tyrant ends the same way.