Eternal Traveler
The
sonnet Ozymandias was written by a poet by the name of Percy Shelley (1792
-1822). The poem was published in a newspaper called The Examiner in 1818 when Shelley was only twenty-six. Shelley
lived a very brief life, but he has and interesting story. Percy was the
“eldest son” and first in line to “inherit not only his grandfather’s
considerable estate but also a seat in Parliament”. He
attended Eton College for six years starting in 1804 where he learned the love
for the written word. He was first
published in 1810. Shelley then began his education at Oxford, but his stay
there is short and he is expelled for writing and distributing a pamphlet
titled “The Necessity of Athiesm”. This
pamphlet caused a “complete break between Shelley and his father” and he was
cut off from the family fortune. This
did not stop Shelley and within two years he was back on his feet. He
married the author of “Frankenstein”, hobknobed with Lord Byron, and wrote
numerous popular reads. Shelley mentions an “ancient traveler” in his sonnet
Ozymandias, but when Shelley himself, attempted to “sail from Leghorn to La
Spezia, Italy”, he was caught in a storm, his schooner, the Don Juan sank, and
Percy Shelley drowned. Ozymandias is one of his more visible works read to this
day. There are many observances to be made on the structure, the history, and
the message this poem holds. The poem Ozymandias, has travelled through time, been
read by countless minds, and interpreted, inspired, and looked upon as a
repeating prophecy in this endless expanding and contracting world in which we
exist.
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
10
(1) I met a traveler from an antique
land
10 (2) Who said: "Two vast and
trunkless legs of stone
10 (3) Stand in the desert. Near them on
the sand,
10 (4) Half sunk, a shattered visage
lies, whose frown
10 (5) And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
10 (6) Tell that its sculptor well
those passions read
10 (7) Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,
10 (8) The hand that mocked them and
the heart that fed.
10 (9) And on the pedestal these words
appear:
10 (10) `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
10 (11) Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
10 (12) Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
10 (13) Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
10 (14) The lone and level sands stretch far away".
This
may be one of the faces of a “traveler from an antique land”.
His name is Diodorus Siculus and he was a historian from Greece that was
thought to have lived within one hundred years before Jesus Christ. Siculus
wrote for over thirty years a history of the world encyclopedia called the
Bibliotheca Historica. It
is presumed that Percy Shelley had read Siculus’s work and it perhaps inspired
him to use the name Ozymandias.The
poem Ozymandias contains fourteen lines, but what is really interesting is that
Shelley was able to keep ten syllables in each line. This fourteen line iambic
pentameter poem is called a sonnet and was a popular practice in Shelley’s
time.
The number of syllables per line in a poem is known as syllabic verse. Syllable count became a useful tool for
English speaking poets because English can become very “awkward” due to its
“heavily stressed” form. By using syllabic count patterns, “the masters could
count the syllables” to “produce admirable cadences”.The poem uses a limited amount of rhyme like
a light seasoning on a delicious meal.
The
tone throughout Ozymandias is cold and straight forward, as though the traveler
was the voice of justice pronouncing a sentence, carried out by the scolding
hand of God. The head of the sculpture of Ozymandias is broken off from the
body and rest “half sunk” into the sand:
“Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”
This
image of the head of Ozymandias barely sticking up out of the sand evokes a
scene from Dante’s Inferno from the “lowest region of Hell”.
This place in Hell is called “Antenora, the second ring” from the “Ninth Circle
of Hell”. This is where “those who
betrayed their country and party stand frozen up to their heads” in a solid
lake of ice for eternity. Antenora is where “Dante meets Count Ugolino, who
spends eternity gnawing on the head of the man who imprisoned him in life”. Ozymandias’s eyes are forever wide open and
fixated on those that stand before him to read the arrogant inscription at the
base of his statue that reads:
“`My name is
Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my
works, ye mighty, and despair!'”
This
is Ozymandias’s Hell. His head unable to move, his eyes unable to shut, and his
words lay before him, to be read by unknown travelers for eternity. It’s almost
as though his own arrogant words and ego is forever to “gnaw” on his head.
A
poetic technique that seems to encapsulate Ozymandias’s full meaning is
Shelley’s use of irony. The sonnet Ozymandias is fairly straightforward with
its story line. It is the story of a traveler that comes across a land where a
great civilization once stood. With this great civilization, comes a powerful
ruler who is blind to the possibility of his kingdom’s demise. The arrogant inscription
at the base of Ozymadias statue fully illustrates the use of tragic irony.
The
use of imagery by Shelley is incredible. Shelley is able to clearly open the reader’s
mind to a place where all senses come to life, as if entranced by a vivid
dream. When reading the sonnet, one can imagine the wasteland where the
traveler has been. Shelley is able to do this without a long detailed
description. From Shelley’s masterful use of brief description, one can imagine
this wasteland of sand swirling through the air, the hot sun relentlessly
pounding down upon one’s head, unable to quench the persistent thirst weakening
all the internal mechanisms that enable one to keep moving forward. This vivid
dream unfolds into a deeper one. The reader squints the eyes to see through the
swirling sand and begins to see what once had been. The blowing sand subsides,
stone walls rise and the statue of Ozymandias is once again to its original
glory. The sound of people, the smell of livestock, and the great civilization once
again stands before the reader. Just as quickly as grand vision fully develops,
it collapses upon itself and the swirling sand once again stings the eyes.
This
sonnet tells the story of a civilization that, at one point and time, was one
of the most powerful in the world. However, this story can be applied to many
seemingly impervious civilizations in human history. It is a story that repeats
itself over and over again. From civilization’s very beginnings, great nations
expand and contract, never learning, always forgetting, becoming overzealous,
or complacent, and then crumble upon their own weight, to be buried by the
sands of time.
Where will the great nations of today stand two
thousand years from now?
Works Cited
Deutsch,
Babette. Poetry Handbook: A Dictionary of
terms. 4th ed. Harper Perennial. 1974. Print.
Poets.org. Percy Bysshe Shelley. © 1997 -
2012Academy of American Poets. <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/179>
Sparknotes.
Inferno:Dante
Alighieri. 2012. <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/inferno/summary.html>
Poets.org. Percy Bysshe Shelley. © 1997 – 2012. Academy
of American Poets. <http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/179>
Deutsch, Babette. Poetry Handbook: A
Dictionary of terms. 4th ed. Harper Perennial. 1974. Print.
