This document provides context and analysis for the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It examines the key poetic devices and literary techniques used, including rhyme, meter, enjambment, and caesura. It also analyzes the character and voice within the poem, noting how the unnamed traveler relates the story of encountering the shattered statue of Ramesses II, known as Ozymandias, in the desert. The document concludes that the poem serves as a symbolic representation of the arrogance of man and the transient nature of power and glory.

1. Poetry Across Time: Character and voice
Key
Language: connotation, imagery, metaphor, simile
Structure and form: stanzas, type, patterns, contrast, juxtaposition
Poetic methods: alliteration, caesura, assonance, rhythm, rhyme
Character and voice: who is speaking and to whom? Tone of voice
Links: comparisons to other speakers, methods and themes
A mysterious
remoteness is set Another name for Ramesses the Great, Sonnet written in iambic
up – an unnamed Pharaoh if ancient Egypt. He exemplified pentameter
‘I’. The traveller is the ‘mighty fallen’
from an ‘antique
land’. We do not Harsh, alliterative
know where the Ozymandias sounds – final stubborn
two met. statement?
Hand may refer to the I met a traveller from an antique land
sculptor, mocking the Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Poet’s
King’s ‘passions’ or Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, mocking the
facial expression. The Vanity.
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
‘hand’ could represent Compare with
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Keats’
the authority of
Ozymandias. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read ‘Grecian Urn’.
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, ‘Cold
The hand that mock’d them and the heard that fed; Pastoral’.
Concise and
abrupt to And on the pedestal these words appear:
reflect simple ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
finality. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay The ending confirms
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the central–theme of
the poem the
The single sentence The lone and level sands stretch far away.
(3-11) nonetheless transience of man.
injects a burst of Rhyme scheme is
energy before the unusual and the use of
final demise – Ozymandias
caesura and
‘Nothing…’ seems almost
enjambment seem to
inhuman, so
break up pattern. This
lacking in
doubtless reflects the
warmth is he –
tension in the poem.
statue is
appropriate.
Interpretations of the poem:
 A symbolic representation of the arrogance of man and the behaviour
of those who feel that they are immortal. The poem also serves as a
reminder of how we remember those who rule through fear. The
breaking down of the statue can also be seen as a symbol of nature's
destruction of human vanity.