Ozymandias- Percy Bysshe 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,
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;
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 “Ozymandias,” Percy Shelley
points out that power, no matter how great, is often only temporary. He
discusses a commanding leader, Ozymandias, but contrasts his greatness with the
decay of a toppled statue. The name Ozymandias refers to Ramses II, the third pharaoh
of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and one of the most powerful and most
influential of the Egyptian pharaohs. As the poem itself says, Ozymandias describes
himself as the “King of Kings,” almost as if to put himself above human power
in saying that he was even above the rulers of the humans, the kings. This
attitude if further displayed in the following line of the inscription.
Ozymandias took pride in his “works,” as can be seen by his flaunting of them
on his statue. These works are representative of his mark on the world – his
power.
However, the traveler shows how
completely that power has vanished in his description of the statue’s state. He
starts at the base of the statue, describing the legs as “trunkless,”
suggesting that they have no solid base, a description extended to the power of
Ozymandias. Although the statue was once stable standing tall and capable of
holding its own weight, like the empire and leader it was meant to celebrate,
it has crumbled to the ground, inevitably worn down by the ruthless minions of
nature and time.
The traveler continues with the
face of the statue, mentioning its “shattered visage.” Just as the head of a
government or country is thought to be the embodiment of that government or
country, this visage does the same. The head of the statue can be associated
with all of the power that Ozymandias and his empire possessed. However, like
the visage shattered on the ground, the power has also fallen to pieces. What
used to look down on others, flaunting a high position above them, has fallen,
both figuratively and literally, to the ground, the lowest of the low. However,
it’s important to note that the visage has not disappeared completely, merely
been shattered. The power the Ozymandias wielded has been shattered, unable to
hold its original authority, but it a shadow still remains. The shattered face
is not the same as a face, but it still brings back the memory of the face and
everything that the face represented. In the same way, Ozymandias’ power lives
in the influence it had on modern culture, but it continues in such a way that
cannot be considered true power, regardless of how fearsome it may have been
before.
By drawing on Ozymandias’ statue
to bring out the essence of Ozymandias’ power, Shelley makes an important
connection. Power is just like any other material good. At the moment, it may
be exquisite, enviable, unrivaled. Despite this, very few material goods can
withstand the ultimate power of time unscathed. In the same way, power very
rarely withstands time. Whether it be power within a household, school, city,
state, country, or planet, time changes and authority changes constantly, an endlessly
ticking clock that never stays in the same place for long.
