Ozymandias was a Greek emperor in Egypt over 3,000 years ago. In 1818, Percy
Bysshe Shelley and his friend Horace Smith both wrote sonnets about
Ozymandias as a friendly challenge/competition. You decide who the
winner was! For Smith's Ozymandias click here.
"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
What irony. "Boundless, bare, lifeless, trunkless, desert, etc none of these words describe a king of kings. "The hand that mocked them." It almost seems like eventually, someone would destroy the statue out of spite. Before reading this poem I would have thought this a very American punk rock thing to do, but maybe it's a human thing to do.
ReplyDeleteOzymandias is the villain from Watchmen. I don't actually remember what happens to him in the end. He was a king of kings type character, and I'm pretty sure he was an ends justify the means type character. I might comment more on this after looking at the Watchmen ending.
I wonder if Ozymandias was a historical king? Legend or myth? I'll have to look it up. Of course it is from Greek history. Also this poem was a competition between Shelley and his friend Horace Smith. That's pretty cool!