Near them, / on the sand,įirst of all, the line opens with a trochee. Hints to come, however, occur as early as the third line, which scans: This is a fairly standard - albeit atmospheric - iambic couplet. Who said, / Two vast / and trunk- / less legs / of stone I met / a trav– / ler from / an an– / tique land We see “Ozymandias”, like so many sonnets, open in iambic pentameter: In fact, the manner in which he does so, with the scansion variance correlating to the poem’s emotional climax, is arguably a commentary on meter itself (especially in light of the metric breakdown that occurred in poetry’s avant-garde over the latter half of the 19th century). Shelley was a master of meter, and in “Ozymandias” he purposefully breaks and reforms his meter to achieve the effect he’s looking for. Nearly every line from the poem is highly quotable, and this is no accident. However, in doing so, these analyses miss another level on which “Ozymandias” is successful: it is a technical masterpiece. This is not necessarily a bad thing: “Ozymandias” is a poem of sublime lyric power, and the lyric mode has always been emotionally-focused.

As a function of representing the death of power and the death of the individual who wielded this power, the author spends a great deal of time discussing the way in which the statue itself is broken down, half covered by the sands of the desert.Most analyses of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” - as is common in the Romantic and post-Romantic schools of poetic analysis - focus almost exclusively on emotion and imagery. The reader is, of course, made aware of the fact that the poem itself discusses a statue, and by extension a character, who has long since passed away. Perhaps the most powerful imagery of all that is represented within the poem “Ozymandias” is the stark representation of life and death that are alluded to both figuratively and literally throughout the work. As such, what the author is ultimately seeking to portray is the identity both of Ozymandias and that of the lower levels of society that had propelled him to such a lofty and high stature. Ultimately, these processes are such that they can be defined as inevitable a fundamental understanding that is required for better appreciating the subject matter that Shelley represents. By engaging in such a level of understanding, it is the hope of this author that the reader will gain a further level of overall understanding and discernment with respect to what each of these poems seeks to represent and the mechanisms that they utilize to impact the reader and his/her engagement with the topic.Īs a function of this level of analysis, the first poem which will be analyzed is that of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”. Conversely, the metaphor will be defined as the literary process of having one thing stand for another by means of comparison. For purposes of this analysis, imagery will be defined as a construct which utilizes the readers understanding to represent something. The author will attempt to show the key concepts which govern and define the ways that both of these otherwise unrelated writers utilize with regards to their use of imagery and metaphor within their respective works.

Imagery in ozymandias