"Ozymandias" by P. B. Shelley

		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 shattered visage lies, whose frown,
		And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,	5
		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;
		And on the pedestal these words appear:
		My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,	10
		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’.—

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
         Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
         The only shadow that the Desart knows:—
         "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
         "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
         "The wonders of my hand."—The City's gone,—
         Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
         Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
         What powerful but unrecorded race
         Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

5

10

Study Questions

How many speakers are there in Shelley’s sonnet, “Ozymandias”? Who are they? What does each say? How are their messages the same or different?
Part of the words engraved on the pedestal reads: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (l. 11). What are the works of Ozymandias? What remnants of his achievements remain?
The phrase “colossal Wreck” juxtaposes a sense of grandness with that of ruin (l. 15), making the combined result almost an oxymoron: if something is destroyed, how can it be magnificent? Examine some other juxtapositions. These might be contrastive words or ideas set close to each other like “survive” and “lifeless” (l. 7), or images like “vast and trunkless” or “trunkless legs” and “standing” (l. 2,3), or scales of things like “colossal” and “boundless” (l. 15). What effect do these ironic pairs have on the development of the sonnet?

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

August 31, 2012

Reading Response 3

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Text.

Works Cited

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Article

Rawida Komkai

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

September 6, 2011

Reading Response 3

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Links

Poem Texts

"Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Ozymandias" (with notes)
P B Shelley, 'Ozymandias', British Library

Criticism

Stephen Hebron, "An introduction to ‘Ozymandias,’" British Library
"Ozymandias," The Poems of Shelley, vol. 2: 1817–1819 (2014)
Patrick Gillespie, PoemShape

"Shelley’s Sonnet: Ozymandias" (2009; who was Ozymandias?, about the sonnet, interpreting the sonnet)
"Ozymandias – The Bodleian Draft" (2012)

Shelley, draft of Ozymandias, Shelley's Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family
"Ozymandias," British Library (audio clip of reading by Dominic West, transcript, interpretation by Aviva Dautch)
"King of Kings," The Economist (2013; "The enthusiasms, rivalries, fads and fashions that lie behind Shelley’s best-known poem")
Johnstone Parr, "Shelley's "Ozymandias"," Keats-Shelley Journal 6 (1957)
Zachary Sng, "The Construction of Lyric Subjectivity in Shelley's 'Ozymandias,'" Studies in Romanticism 37.2 (1998)
Johnstone Parr, "Shelley's 'Ozymandias' again," The Modern Language Review 46.3/4 (1951)
John Rodenbeck, "Travelers from an Antique Land: Shelley's Inspiration for 'Ozymandias,'" Alif 24 (2004)
Albert S. Cook, "Shelley's 'Ozymandias,'" Modern Language Notes 20.6 (1905)
Carol Rumens, "The Romantic Poets: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley," The Guardian (2010)

Romanticism

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." The Poems of Shelley. Vol. 2: 1817–1819. Eds. Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews. London: Routledge, 2014. 310–11. Print.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Ozymandias." Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. 103. Print.

"Ozymandias." The Poems of Shelley. Vol. 2: 1817–1819. Eds. Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews. London: Routledge, 2014. 306–11. Print.

The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Thomas Hutchinson. London: Oxford University press, 1960. Print.

Select Letters of Bysshe Shelley. Ed. Richard Garnett. New York: Appleton, 1896. Print.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Poems and Prose. Ed. Timothy Webb. London: Orion House, 1995. Print.

Shelley's Critical Prose. Ed. Bruce R. McElderry, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967. Print.