Paraphrase
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Explication
Rhyme: a b a b? a c d c e d e f e f
First person account
of an encounter with a
someone who had
been to a country
considered out-ofdate with the speaker.
I met a traveler from an antique land
Meter: Pentameter (not consistently iambic)
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,
Traveler relates
description of statue
in the desert.
Statue is separated –
legs are in one place
the head is nearby.
The face is depicted in
a frown, sneering
expression of a leader.
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
Starts out seeming like Shakespearean, but then goes off strangely not meeting
the rhyme scheme – the iambic pentameter is not followed either, “And on the
ped e stal these words appear:”)
The octave / sestet separation is evident: topic of octave is the meeting of the
traveler who describes the statue.
The sestet is specifically the pedestal and what is around it.
Shift: The juxtaposition of the idea of the grand sculpture and the words
engraved against the image of the “decay / of that colossal wreck”
demonstrating its meaninglessness.
Speaker: unknown first person
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
The sculptor perfectly
captured on this rock
the emotion
experienced by a
leader who
experienced people
both loving and
antagonistic.
Form: Sonnet
Addressed to: reader – narrative form
Ozymandias: Greek name of Ramses II – Egyptian pharaoh in the 13th century
B.C. -statue actually exists near Luxor.
Tone: Author’s tone is almost dismissive of this great leader and the past
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Tone conveyed: through diction “antique land”, “colossal wreck”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Enjambment: continuation of line from line one to two and from two to three
with no break in thought or punctuation.
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
End-stopped line: Line 11 and 14 are the only end-stopped lines in the poem,
ending with definitive end of line punctuation.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Caesura: break in mid line occurs in line 12, after “remains”
Synecdoche: “visage” is used to mean head – part standing in for the whole
The inscription on the
pedestal relates a
quote from
Ozymandias, where it
Alliteration: “C” – “cold command”
Alliteration: “S” - “stand”, “sand”, “sunk”, “sneer”, “survive, stamped”
is stated that people
should see all that he
accomplished and
despair (either out of
grief for his cruelty or
for the fact that they
will never accomplish
as much).
Synecdoche: “hand that mocked him” representing people/enemies
Synecdoche: “heart that fed” representing people who loved and supported
him
Theme conveyed through diction: Ruin, or the impact of time – the once great
leader was important enough to commission this “colossal” statue, yet now it
sits in ruin, forgotten and in disrepair, important to no one (“shattered”,
“lifeless”, “nothing”, “decay”, “wreck”, etc.)
Alliteration: “boundless and bare”
Nothing else survives
of the massive
sculpture in a state of
decay. The desert
sand is all that
surrounds this now
meaningless statue.
Alliteration: “lone and level”
Alliteration: “sands stretch”
All last three examples of alliteration, along with the continued rhyme from
desparir to bare, emphasize the fact that the statue now stands alone, fallen
and broken in the desert, where once it probably was in a place of honor,
surrounded by those Ozymandias ruled.