The Hand That Mocked Them: An Analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
The most recognizable of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems is “Ozymandias”, and yet despite this the poem is often discussed in terms disassociated from its origins. For example, few who have read the work know that it was conceived during a mere contest, one of the many staged between Shelley and a fellow poet (“Overview”). Even fewer can recall the poet’s name, Horace Smith, and his competing piece of the same name. Like the great Pharaoh himself, Smith’s achievements have been scattered to the winds and forgotten. Such a fate is clairvoyantly reflected in “Ozymandias”, wherein Shelley combines an atypical rhyme scheme and structure with a disembodied, fundamentally ironic tone that questions its own reliability – and emphasizes the underlying theme of power’s futility when exposed to the sands of time.
“Ozymandias” is a sonnet, yet not in a precisely traditional sense; there is no …show more content…
The tone of the poem is one of complete detachment, a deliberate separation from the events told within. Shelley, the quintessential Romanticist, was very rarely given to dispassion. Like a Socratic dialogue (appropriately so, as the name Ozymandias is itself a Greek version of the name Ramesses), the author immediately establishes the tale to be given by a second-hand source: “I met a traveller from an antique land / Who said:” (1-2). The intent of this obfuscation is to present the possibility of a doubtful retelling of what could otherwise be considered an authentic event, and as such serves as a remark upon the nature of truth and first impressions (Freedman). Shelley is hesitant to take the statue of Ozymandias, nor the telling of it, at face value. He takes until the last lines to give more than a hint of the poem’s meaning, and even postpones the volta from the start of the sestet to the twelfth line in order to achieve
The most recognizable of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems is “Ozymandias”, and yet despite this the poem is often discussed in terms disassociated from its origins. For example, few who have read the work know that it was conceived during a mere contest, one of the many staged between Shelley and a fellow poet (“Overview”). Even fewer can recall the poet’s name, Horace Smith, and his competing piece of the same name. Like the great Pharaoh himself, Smith’s achievements have been scattered to the winds and forgotten. Such a fate is clairvoyantly reflected in “Ozymandias”, wherein Shelley combines an atypical rhyme scheme and structure with a disembodied, fundamentally ironic tone that questions its own reliability – and emphasizes the underlying theme of power’s futility when exposed to the sands of time.
“Ozymandias” is a sonnet, yet not in a precisely traditional sense; there is no …show more content…
The tone of the poem is one of complete detachment, a deliberate separation from the events told within. Shelley, the quintessential Romanticist, was very rarely given to dispassion. Like a Socratic dialogue (appropriately so, as the name Ozymandias is itself a Greek version of the name Ramesses), the author immediately establishes the tale to be given by a second-hand source: “I met a traveller from an antique land / Who said:” (1-2). The intent of this obfuscation is to present the possibility of a doubtful retelling of what could otherwise be considered an authentic event, and as such serves as a remark upon the nature of truth and first impressions (Freedman). Shelley is hesitant to take the statue of Ozymandias, nor the telling of it, at face value. He takes until the last lines to give more than a hint of the poem’s meaning, and even postpones the volta from the start of the sestet to the twelfth line in order to achieve