![]() As such, while I let the poem stew in my mind, I felt some pressure to do the work justice, to contribute something of value to the conversation surrounding it. People who haven’t read a poem in decades remember this one from high school. Of all the poem’s I’ve given the close reading treatment, “Ozymandias” is by the far the most famous. Second, and more importantly, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the task. ![]() First, having just covered a sonnet by a Romantic-era poet when I got the suggestion, I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself right out of the gate as someone stuck in that style and time period. I’ve put off diving into this particular poem for two reasons. They are all prone to be affected by the laws of time.This month’s poem analysis is a first for the blog: a reader suggestion! In the comments section for my post on Charlotte Smith’s “Written in the Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex” (which you can read here), Elizabeth of Serial Outlet recommended that I take a look at an English class staple: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” About four months later, and here we are! His image of the broken sculpture shows how things change over time and that human beings and materialistic values are seasonal and are bound to end. The passions don’t seem to be suggested to be bad, but Ozymandias’ feeding on these passions of greed and conceit resulted in evil, the same evil we see on the statue’s face. It seems obvious then that the passions kept the heart alive and beating, the passions are sustenance to the heart. When you look at it like this, Ozymandias’ heart becomes a killer and the passions his prey. The heart seemed to be compared to a powerful figure and the passions seemed more like an animal the master throws some food to, but I think the sense is more that Ozymandias’ heart fed on the passions. These same passions are said by the traveler to “survive” the “hand that mocked them,” which would be the sculptor, and the “heart that fed” them, which is Ozymandias’.The poem is consistent to a single metaphor: the shattered, ruined statue in the desert wasteland, but another metaphor is “the heart that fed”. The reader, most likely imagines that these passions are greed, conceit, and other passions that are appropriate to a harsh, power-loving ruler. In this octave though it is suggests that the stone is “lifeless”, but on it is some “passions”. This leaves the reader with an impression that Ozymandias’ was a cold ruler and had no trouble giving orders. The Traveler says that the lip is “wrinkled”, but he says this is not because of old age but it is the “sneer of cold command”. ![]() The figure represented in the statue is dead, along with the civilization to which it once belonged. He tells us that the “trunk” of the statue is gone The head of the statue lies in the sand at the feet of the legs and the expression on the face is still visible. The Traveler’s whole speech is about a statue that he once saw in the middle of a desert. The traveler is described as well-traveled, knowledgeable, and wise. Antiques are valued mainly for their age and are almost always not modern. The speaker tells us the traveler is from an “antique land,” which is a metaphor for the old age of his country. The other is the traveler, who tells the main speaker about the poem. The first is the speaker, who tells the entire poem.
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