Shelley‘s life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social conventions. Much of this poetry and prose was not published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist and radical political circles and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mahatma Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw. Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. His other major works include the verse drama, The Cenci (1819), and long poems such as Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820)-widely considered his masterpiece- Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822). Shelley’s critical reputation fluctuated in the twentieth century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are “ Ozymandias” (1818), “ Ode to the West Wind” (1819), “ To a Skylark” (1820), and the political ballad “ The Mask of Anarchy” (1819).
Percy Bysshe Shelley ( /bɪʃ/ ( listen) BISH 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. Harold Bloom calls him: “a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem.” A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats. The brilliance of this poem is that in addition to being applicable to Ramses, it can just as applicable to anyone with sufficient hubris. The lone and level sands stretch far away. The traveler says that “nothing beside remains.” The poem concludes with a great line illustrating the last influence of the king. The last three lines of the poem put into perspective the greatness of even the greatest of human lives. It is a sentiment probably well known to tyrants throughout history. He wants all who see his works to despair in the face of his greatness. The message tells us more about Ozymandias himself. Here on the pedestal the traveler recounts a message from Ozymandias himself. Line nine is the start of the sonnet’s closing sestet and it draws attention away from the statue and toward the pedestal. The cruelest tyrants also prefer that his own people love him. This perplexing dichotomy is not elaborated upon but it is not surprising. The statue of Ozymandius is said to have hands that mocked his people and a heart that fed them. Line eight gives us more of the traveler’s insight on the subject of the sculpture. The work of the sculptor lives on while the proud ruler is long since dead. Subtly, here, we are told that art outlives its source material. The traveler states that the sculptor must have known the ruler well. The picture here is of a prideful and powerful ruler.Īfter describing the statue, the traveler thinks about the sculptor who made the statue. From what remains of the face, he sees that it sneers. The large legs stand but near them in the sand is a broken face. What does the traveler tell us? He describes encountering an enormous statue in the desert. In fact, the traveler’s quote, from line 2 through the end, is all one sentence. The Speaker starts the poem by telling us that he met “a traveller from an antique land.” Starting in the second line, though, the traveler is quoted until the poem’s conclusion wherein he talks about what he saw in Egypt. The poem is told from a first person perspective. The rhyme scheme is interesting: AB AB AC DC ED EF EF. It has fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter.
We should thus assume that the antique land, in the desert, referred to by the Speaker of this poem, is Egypt. Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramses II. 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 mock’d them and the heart that fed Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone To view more poems I have examined, click HERE.
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