p o e [T] r i e

 

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

                 The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is told in the first person’s point of view however, the story behind the speaker’s recalling is told by a traveler who he had met. The poem frames a picture which is considered as an artistic trait, it is a vision that describes other vision. It is a sonnet. It is composed of fourteen lines and metered in iambic pentameter. 

          Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem explores aesthetics, beauty, and art in particular. We can notice how the speaker describes the statue. First is the façade of the statue, shattered visage, frown and wrinkled lip, sneer of cold command. In the way the speaker describes the statue, we can now tell that it has been challenged by time or it was affected by the passage of time. It is clearly noticeable when he says, Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand, half sunk…, with the descriptions that the speaker provides, we can tell how the statue is being defeated by the course of time. The statue or the monument symbolizes power but it is ironic as to how we are told by it, shattered, frown and wrinkled, etc. The image of the sand in the desert is reflective to the monument, it is because, a sand never stays on its place- it takes another path depending on the blow of the wind. It is parallel to the image of the monument given that we don’t see its worth in relation as to how we perceived it before since it istransitory, it fades and it is doomed to be “somehow” forgotten. The words found on its pedestal is somewhat mocking. For me, how I see them is something repulsive maybe because of its irony. Ozymandias is a great ruler, so to speak, but the fact that it is half sunk and deserted would mean something.

               Percy Bysshe Shelley used an obscure rendering on how it is told. Since it is told by a man who met a traveler along his journey we see the statue as less commanding not unlike when it is directly told by the one who has seen it. There are words that are emphasized in the poem like, Works, Wreck and Mighty. This emphasis only shows how much of it was wrecked or how Mighty Ozymandias’s works are. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem says so much with the ephemeral nature of one’s political power. The allusion to the Egyptian monarch Rameses II is a perfect example on how political power affects. The monument or Ozymandias’s work is destructed or condemned by the time or perhaps by the people, it has been devoured by the destructive power of time. It doesn’t mean that if one has gained prestige during his time it would mean that it will forever be recalled or remembered. In this case, we are told that the sculpture lives forever through literature, that his work of art will linger. It also tells us that history moves on but art never forgets. The symbol of the monument is a special work of art- not really about what Ozymandias had done but to art and language. That no matter how long or how decayed a work would be as long as it has been put into a form of language (poetry, fiction,etc.) it will be timeless and it’s worth lasts forever. The choice of words of the speaker works. Say for example, antique, vast, trunkless, shattered, stamped, colossal, boundless, bare, lone, level, far away, these words suit for the characteristics of the statue. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem is political given the allusion. By this, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias shows us the power of art’s sensual pleasure.