Ozymandias

by: Percy Shelley

An 1818 sonnet written by Percy Shelley.

It is written in iambic pentameter but with an atypical rhyme scheme.

Shelley and his friend, fellow poet Horace Smith, each wrote an Ozymandias poem in competition with one another.

Ozymandias is the Greek name for the great Egyptian pharaoh, Ramesses II.

What themes can you see that emerge?

Objectives

Students will read Ozymandias.

Students will reflect on the poem as they read it.

Students will attain a basic, thematic understanding of Ozymandias.

Students will venture a reading of the poem that produces some meaning relevant to the current day.

Task

Choose a theme: hubris/pride, time, decay, impermanence/transience, power

Explore what the poem has to say about that theme.

How does the poem incorporate the theme?

What does the poem say about that theme?

Identify how that message speaks to contemporary issues.

Use quotes from the text to support the meaning you see at play in the text (at least 3).

Your response should be 1-2 double-spaced pages.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.

What are “trunkless legs?”

What do you think “antique land” means?

How do “antique” and “age/time” relate?

Why do you think the legs are trunkless?

Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

What is lying on the ground?

What does “sneer of cold command” indicate?

What did the sculptor do or read well?  How did it affect the look of the sculpture?

What still survives?  How so?

What do hands that mock and a heart that feeds indicate about Ozymandias?

Who do you think is “them?”  How did Ozymandias treat them?

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.

What does Ozymandias think of himself?

What does it mean for others to despair?

What remains of Ozymandias the stature?  The man?

Why is that all that remains?

What is mightier than Ozymandias?

Images and Video

Cover by Mitry Anderson taken from fineartamerica.com

Image #1 taken from crazy4images.com

Image #2 taken from orthosphere.wordpress.com

Image #3 taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

Video taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts