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.”
Source: Shelley’s Poetry and
Prose (1977)
Ozymandias
exemplifies the conceit of human greatness and the failure of all efforts to immortalize
his grandeur. Ozymandias was a great Egyptian king, a life like statue of whom
was made to immortalize his memories. Now the Statue seen half-buried and broken,
and all around it there is seen a stretch of barren desert.
The
poet relates an experience of a traveler from Egypt. The traveler saw a statue
in the desert with two huge and trunk less legs, near them lay, half buried,
the broken face of the statue. On this face of the statue can still be seen the
expression of haughtiness and a sense of authority which had artfully been
depicted by the sculptor. On the pedestal, the following words were inscribed:
“My name is Ozymandias and I am a great
king. Look at great deeds which I have accomplished and which nobody can equal.”
This
is a sonnet. It does not strictly follow the accepted conventions of the form
of the sonnet. The rhyme scheme does not follow any of the recognized pattern
and even some of the rhymes are faulty.
It
is one of the best written by Shelley. It has earned high praise from critics
and they considered it powerful, imaginative and
instructive composition. Its moral goes home to our hearts powerfully. Human
glory and pomp are mortal. Hammers of decay quickly follow the hammers of construction.
Times goes havoc with buildings and monuments. However, the moral is not stated.
The poet only presents a picture to human mind and we have ourselves to draw
the moral. It is a didactic poem, but its moral is not thrust upon us directly
Shelley said that didacticism was his abhorrence and he did not preach moral
lessons.
The
mood of the poem is melancholic because it makes us think over the vanity of human
desires and their failures to keep their memories alive. The contrast between
the past glory of the king and the present condition of the statue is very
striking to the mind and emphasis the moral of the poem. The final lines of the
poem are remarkable for the suggestiveness. The poem contains two striking
scenes. One is the picture of the broken statue, a huge wreck, the face of
which still wears a frown and the sneer of cold command, another is the scene of
the lone, and level desert, boundless and bare, stretching far away.
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