English 10 – Creation vs. Nature
Name: _______________________
Unit Assignment: Personal Response to Texts
Carefully read and consider the following texts, and then complete the assignment that follows.
OZYMANDIAS
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".
Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818
A BUS ALONG ST. CLAIR - DECEMBER
It would take more than that to banish
me: this is my kingdom still.
Turn, look up
through the gritty window: an unexplored
wilderness of wires
Though they buried me in monuments
of concrete slabs, of cables
though they mounded a pyramid
of cold light over my head
though they said, We will build
silver paradise with a bulldozer
it shows how little they know
about vanishing: I have
my ways of getting through
Right now, the snow
is no more familiar
to you than it was to me:
this is my doing.
The grey air, the roar
going on behind it
are no more familiar.
I am the old woman
sitting across from you on the bus,
her shoulders drawn up like a shawl;
out of her eyes come secret
hatpins, destroying
the walls, the ceiling
Turn, look down:
there is no city;
this is the centre of a forest
your place is empty
Margaret Atwood
PERSONAL RESPONSE TO TEXTS ASSIGNMENT
You have been provided with three texts. One interpretation of “Ozymandias” suggests that
Shelley’s poem explores how human endeavours will never outlast the elements. In Atwood’s “A
Bus Along St. Clair – December”, anger and frustration with human creation is suggested by
Susanna Moodie’s narrative voice. The image captures robots whose personification suggests
human struggle.
The Assignment
What do these texts suggest about the relationship between nature and human
creation? Support your idea(s) with reference to one or more of the texts presented
and to your previous knowledge and/or experience.
In your writing, you must

Use a prose form (anything but poetry – an essay, a short story, etc.)

connect one or more of the texts provided in this examination to your own ideas and
impressions