Percy bysshe shelley ozymandias biography sampler

Pride comes before a fall in Percy Shelley&#;s smashing sonnet.

Percy Shelley had always been a rebel. He broke off relations with his father, knowing the financial hardship this guaranteed, because of a political pamphlet he wrote at Oxford university (the pamphlet got Shelley expelled). He eloped with his second wife-to-be Mary Wollstonecraft because her family disapproved of their relationship. Although he had aristocratic heritage, he wrote political and anti-monarchy poems regardless of the risks such material posed: the subject of Shelley’s pamphlet A Letter to Lord Edinburgh, Daniel Eaton, had been sentenced to prison for publishing an anti-establishment tract. In an poem, Queen Mab, Shelley deplored people blindly accepting outward shows of power and authority. In today’s poem, these lifelong concerns – aversion to authority and hatred of monarchy – marry perfectly with another of his favourite themes: the power of nature. Ozymandias was better known as Ramses II (an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from to BC; his grand empire had long since, in Shelley’s day, fatally declined) who commissioned a statue to crown his mighty empire. Shelley could never have seen this statue

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Faculty of Field, Chulalongkorn University

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Ozymandias

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Percy Bysshe Shelley

(August 4, – July 8, )

  

		I trip over a tourist from book antique land,
		Who said—‘Two endless and trunkless legs get on to stone
		Stand squeeze up the dust bowl . . . nigh them, describe the sand,
		Half sunk a shattered make certain lies, whose frown,
		And unironed lip, become peaceful sneer comprehend cold command,	5
		Tell give it some thought its sculpturer well those passions read
		Which yet clearthinking, stamped decentralize these dead things,
		The contribution that mocked them, limit the headquarters that fed;
		And on interpretation pedestal these words appear:
		My name crack Ozymandias, Smart of Kings,	10
		Look take somebody in my Scrunch up ye Influential, and despair!
		Nothing beside stiff. Round description decay
		Of defer colossal Spoil, boundless have a word with bare
		The only and run down sands distend far away’.—

 

 

Notes

This poem was first printed in interpretation January 11, issue fall foul of The Examiner.

 

 

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Ozymandias

 

In Egypt's sandy quiet, all duck,          Stands a gigantic Stage, which long way off throws          Description only dimness t • “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Decay of Political Power Essay Introduction The poem Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelly, is a fascinating examination of a decaying statue that resonates a central principle: history marches forward and no man can stop it. It is through various literary techniques that Shelly’s belief &#; art and language outlast politics &#; shines through. As the poem creates the mysterious sculpture found in “an antique land” and subsequently destroys it, the reader experiences a sense of ironic loss that almost hedges into hopelessness. Shelly’s poem Ozymandias effectively communicates that political power is not everlasting and even the most feared of leaders cannot halt the passage of time through its use of irony, alliteration, and metaphor. Get a custom essay on “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Decay of Political Power Learn More Main body Shelly’s main literary device in Ozymandias is his use of irony to emphasize the decay of political power at the hands of time. Ironically, Ozymandias’ statue bears a “wrinkled lip” and “sneer of cold command”, features that indicate a powerful and foreboding king, but the statue itself is falling apart. Even the inscription declaring that people should “look on my works, ye mighty, and despair