The theme of power and mortality in Shelley's Ozymandias

Ozymandias

Biography

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1827) was born in Sussex, England and attended Oxford University. However, he was expelled due to his political activism and spent several years campaigning against political injustices. His first marriage failed and Shelley then met and married Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Frankenstein. Shelley was good friends with fellow poet Lord Byron. Shelley drowned in a boating accident and was buried in Rome.

Analysis of "Ozymandias"

The speaker meets a traveler who tells him about the ruins of a large statue of an Egyptian pharaoh. The legs and head of the statue lie half-buried in the Saharan sands. The face appears imposing and grim. However, the sculptor, aware of the irony that the statue would far outlive the glory of the king, etched onto the stone the words, "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Now all that remains of the king's ego are these clumps of lifeless stone lingering in the vast desert.

Figures of Speech

No metaphors.

Personification in the phrase "hand that mocked them"

Hyperbole in Ozymandias' words "King of Kings"

No symbols other than the central symbolism of the poem itself.

No allusions except to ancient Egypt.

Devices of Sound

End rhymes: "Land" and "sand"; "read" and "fed."

Rhyme scheme is ABAB

Alliteration: "cold command," "boundless and bare," "lone and level," "sands stretch."

Assonance: none

Refrain: none

Repetition: none

Stanza

Fourteen lines of alternating end-rhymes

Meter

Iambic pentameter. Ten syllables each line

Questions:

1: Who is the speaker in this poem? The listener? How are they related?