Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley Flashcards
“Vast and trunkless”
“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone”
The image of vast help portray the desert a shaving great potential but are juxtaposed by the large missing legs. The potential of the complete statue contradicts the missing aspects
“Passions read”
“Its sculptor well those passions read”
Celebration of the sculptor and how art has survived longer than both the ruler and its sculptor. Heavy link to Romanticism imploring celebration of art. Reflects the pointlessness of humanity in comparison to this statue (TIME)
“Mocked them”
“The hand that mocked them”
Double entendre. Ozymandias once mocked his subjects as he was a cruel ruler. Ironical that the sculptor mocked up a stature of him and it is now a mockery of his command as it has fallen to the test of time
“Ye Mighty”
“Look on my works, ye Mighty and Despair”
Irony how his words outlasted the creation he is proud of. It is almost as if he taunted nature and time with his belief of his own eternalness and now time has crushed his legacy and left his words to laugh at him
“Stretch far away”
“The lone and level sands stretch far away”
The isolation and emptiness of time and nature has dominated Ozymandias’s tyranny as he had once done to the Mighty. A final use of caesura represents the finality of Ozymandias and the eternalness of nature and time
