Featured Poem: Ozymandias by Percy Shelley
Shelley’s Ozymandias is a consideration of the nature of political power, and of the insignificance of human beings in the passage of time. The statue of the once-powerful Ozymandias, ‘king of kings’, now lying ‘sunk’ and ‘shattered’ in ruins not only represents the frailty and triviality of human life, but also how, in the end, that ‘colossal wreck’ of human existence will be outlasted by both art and the written word.
Ozymandias
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.”
Percy Shelley, 1818
According to this great site called Shmoop that I found, Shelley explores a number of issues through this classic poem. Ozymandias explores the question of what happens to tyrant kings, and to world leaders caught up in their own pride. Shelley reiterates the point of the passing of time and the constantly changing nature of history. As we all know, nothing lasts forever even the very worst political leaders and their regimes will all be forgotten at some point.