Ozymandias written by Percy Bysshe Shelley was published in the 11th January 1818 issue of the examiner a weekly intellectual journal and is the result of a competition with the poet Horace Smith the pair both wrote sonnets based on a passage from the writings of the Greek historian diodorus siculus who described a massive Egyptian statue and quoted the inscription that appeared below it the choice of the subject for the competition is believed to have been inspired by the news of the British Museum's acquisition of the head and upper torso of a statue of the Egyptian of pharaoh ramses ii in 1817 the statue did not actually arrive in London until 1821 so it would seem that Shelley's description of it is imagined rather than actual the poem explores the theme of hubris coming from the ancient Greek the word hubris stick describes a person who is foolishly proud and arrogant this leads the person to behave in a dangerously confident manner which in turn brings about their downfall the main purpose of the poem is therefore to provide a moral lesson that tyranny and the pride of man is powerless in the face of time even the legacies of the most powerful and mocked as they are reduced to little more than dust Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Pharaoh ramasees ii who ruled ancient egypt for 66 years from 1279 BC and is widely regarded as the most powerful ruler of the Egyptian Empire much of his early reign is thought of being consumed by an almost obsessive building of monuments temples and cities which were meant as physical reminders of his power and greatness not only did they memorialize his honor they also symbolized his almost divine nature the most iconic of his building still standing are the temples at Abu Simbel which both memorialized ramses ii and his wife Nefertari and commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh in 1275 BC the poem loosely follows the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet it has fourteen lines divided into an octave eight lines and assess that six lines and has a base metre of iambic pentameter dee-dum dee-dum dee-dum dee-dum dee-dum shelley varies this rhythm with the substitution of trochaic feet with a dumb d stress pattern that tillich feet with a dum ditty stress pattern and anapestic feet with a diddy dum stress pattern this more closely mimics a natural speech rhythm than pure I am bit pentameter and helps to bring the story told by the unnamed traveler to life this is further enhanced by its rhyme scheme which follows an a b a b a c d c d e f EF pattern which is not as strict as that required by traditional sonnets shelley makes use of slant rhyme lines two and four stone with frown and para rineman lines nine eleven and thirteen to allow a pier to rhyme with despair which in turn has a single rhyme with bear rather than full rhyme to give the poem a sense of cohesion as well as a more natural conversational feel the poems beginning is intriguing I met a traveller from an antique land who said the words traveler and antique land suggest a tale of far-off exotic and mysterious countries which is further enhanced by the traveller being an unnamed stranger the word antique here is used to mean ancient and so refers to ancient Egypt the enjambment where there is no punctuation at the end of a line on the first line gives the poem momentum from the very start as we are launched into the tale that he has to tell the image of a pair of legs without a body in lines three and four is visually arresting and bizarre enhanced by the use of a trochee dum dee at the beginning of line four to draw attention to the fact that they are the only parts to remain upright two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert the factual tone of this description suggests none of the or that a contemporary of Ramesses would have felt when looking up at the monument the stone legs have become decontextualized objects where nothing around them to give them meaning the word stone tells us that we are looking at a statue and it's state of ruin becomes more evident as the poet goes on to tell us that it's broken faces lying nearby near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies its features can still be made out however and these three facial descriptions whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command effectively built up a picture of a fierce and ruthless ruler that has been skillfully captured by its sculptor the alliteration of the hard sound and the consonants of the hard sounds at the ends of the words link cold with command and enhance the idea of a pharaoh who was both hard and uncompromising the traveler praises the sculptor face skill tell that it's sculptor well those passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things note the sibilants in these lines which adds to the forcefulness communicated by the words stamped the words stamped also suggests the superficiality of the carving though and lifeless things links back to the factual tone at the first description which enhances the sense that these are now merely stones devoid of any life the generic word things reveals that the stones have lost any identity that they had the use of synecdoche where a party's used to signify the hole in the lines the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed makes the link between the creation of these artworks here the hand represents the sculptor and the feeding of the Edo of the Pharaoh represented by the heart hear the word mocked communicates it's less frequently used meaning that of imitating or replicating and suggests that the site of his likeness and his most fearsome facial expressions so masterfully executed by the artist filled the self-exalting Pharaoh with pride and a sense of vanity Shelley has used any one sentence for the description of this shuttered village which stretches from the middle of line 3 to the end of line 8 this coupled with the use of enjambment give the description a sense of momentum and almost breathless excitement at line 9 we have the valta or turning point in the poem which often signals a change of mood or shift in perspective as the description of the shattered statue continues we reach the pedestal upon which the sculptor has carved the words my name is Ozymandias king of kings look on my works ye mighty and despair here the Pharaoh was boldly exhorting those who look upon his statues monuments temples and cities to see them as an embodiment of his divine power and as a consequence to lose all hope and surrender notice the uncharacteristic Elevens syllable line my name is Ozymandias king of kings it seems fitting that the words of the man himself declaring his ultimate power cannot be contained within the structural limitations of the sonnet form this extra syllable is provided by a critic foot with a dum dee-dum stress pattern the stress on King and Kings emphasizes his sense of his own importance ironically of course time has eroded all and nothing beside remains this sentence is short sharp and factual and makes us see the dramatic irony in his words the word nothing is a trochee with a dumb D stress pattern and this first stressed syllable helps to emphatically destroy his self-made image indeed we should look on his works or lack of them and despair but not in the way he intended if time has reduced the legacy of such a powerful man to nothing what hope is there for the rest of us the expressions on his face and his words carved so well by the sculptor only served to mock him in the more common usage of the word now was the statue as an empty and powerless colossal wreck surrounded by an expanse of nothingness his boastfulness and vanity now seem almost pathetic notice the use of the capital w of rec which links it back to works and reminds us of this transformation the final two lines distance us from the remains of the statue as we see it in the context of its surroundings the objectives boundless and bare linked by plosive alliteration which is built on by the further alliterated pair of adjectives loan and level to describe the desert sands convey a sense of infinite nothingness and desolation thanks for watching I'd really appreciate any questions or comments below I look forward to hearing from you