July 30, 2013

Ozymandias^[1]
By: Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

I met a traveller from an antique land,^[2]
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, 5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them,^[3] and the heart that fed;^[4]
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: 10
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.”

Notes and Commentary

↑ The Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II was called Ozymandias by the Greeks, and his reign was the height of Egyptian imperial power. According to Diodorus Siculus, a first-century Greek historian, the following was written at the base of Ramses II statue—the largest in Egypt: “I am Ozymandias, King of kings. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass any of my works.” Ancient Egyptian culture was one obsessed with death and time, and here, Shelley muses on whether is poetic effort, like the statue of Ozymandias, will last throughout the ages (Bloom 2001, p. 18).
↑ Antique implies a temporal ambiguity, both as to the current time in which the narrator resides and the antique time from which the traveller comes. The poem becomes the interface or time warp where they come together (Bloom 2001, p. 18). A similar ambiguity resides around where it is they meet.
↑ The hand is that of the sculptor’s who mocked or imitated and perhaps made fun of the artist’s passions. A “mock,” is also a stump or similar large stick of wood, like a Yule log (Bloom 2001, p. 18). To mock becomes the central pun in the poem, meaning both ridicule and imitate.
↑ A parallel of the first part of the line: the heart is the king’s which fed his passions.

Bibliography

Bloom, Harold (2001). Percy Bysshe Shelley. Bloom’s Major Poets. New York: Chelsea House.

[1] The Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II was called Ozymandias by the Greeks, and his reign was the height of Egyptian imperial power. According to Diodorus Siculus, a first-century Greek historian, the following was written at the base of Ramses II statue—the largest in Egypt: “I am Ozymandias, King of kings. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass any of my works.” Ancient Egyptian culture was one obsessed with death and time, and here, Shelley muses on whether is poetic effort, like the statue of Ozymandias, will last throughout the ages (Bloom 2001, p. 18).

[2] Antique implies a temporal ambiguity, both as to the current time in which the narrator resides and the antique time from which the traveller comes. The poem becomes the interface or time warp where they come together (Bloom 2001, p. 18). A similar ambiguity resides around where it is they meet.

[3] The hand is that of the sculptor’s who mocked or imitated and perhaps made fun of the artist’s passions. A “mock,” is also a stump or similar large stick of wood, like a Yule log (Bloom 2001, p. 18). To mock becomes the central pun in the poem, meaning both ridicule and imitate.

[4] A parallel of the first part of the line: the heart is the king’s which fed his passions.

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