![]() ![]() Line nine is the start of the sonnet’s closing sestet and it draws attention away from the statue and toward the pedestal. The cruelest tyrants also prefer that his own people love him. ![]() This perplexing dichotomy is not elaborated upon but it is not surprising. The statue of Ozymandius is said to have hands that mocked his people and a heart that fed them. Line eight gives us more of the traveler’s insight on the subject of the sculpture. The work of the sculptor lives on while the proud ruler is long since dead. ![]() Subtly, here, we are told that art outlives its source material. The traveler states that the sculptor must have known the ruler well. The picture here is of a prideful and powerful ruler.Īfter describing the statue, the traveler thinks about the sculptor who made the statue. From what remains of the face, he sees that it sneers. The large legs stand but near them in the sand is a broken face. What does the traveler tell us? He describes encountering an enormous statue in the desert. In fact, the traveler’s quote, from line 2 through the end, is all one sentence. The Speaker starts the poem by telling us that he met “a traveller from an antique land.” Starting in the second line, though, the traveler is quoted until the poem’s conclusion wherein he talks about what he saw in Egypt. The poem is told from a first person perspective. The rhyme scheme is interesting: AB AB AC DC ED EF EF. It has fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter. We should thus assume that the antique land, in the desert, referred to by the Speaker of this poem, is Egypt. Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramses II. The lone and level sands stretch far away ” Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone To view more poems I have examined, click HERE. ![]()
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