DESERT ISLAND POEM 7

Ozymandias was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and this magnificent sonnet shows, with utmost skill and succinctness, how every mighty empire not only collapses, but crumbles with the passage of time.

 

The construction is most interesting too as it is set out like a Petrarchan sonnet with an octave followed by a sestet, but they are interlinked and the rhyme scheme conforms to no particular pattern.

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The language is generally plain but precise, working around a single metaphor, and it somehow transports you to that barren desert where, among the wreckage, a monument to hubris remains. That the story is being told by a third party and the subject is unknown to the poet serves to further undermine the arrogance of the words surviving on the pedestal.

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It is utterly pathetic in the truest sense for the self-proclaimed king of kings was ultimately no less vulnerable and no more significant than anyone else against the ravages of time. His words and his actions, which we can imagine from his countenance and the reference made to the sculptor, are clearly worthy of pity as his legacy decays into oblivion.

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Ozymandias is as relevant today as when it was published in 1818 and it might not be a bad idea if it were printed on the wall of every parliament or presidential building throughout the modern world. 

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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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd 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.

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