![]() In this sonnet, the first part sets up the frame narrative and then describes the statue the poem pertains to. It is not until those six lines that we totally understand the poem and its meaning. Most sonnets break into two parts: an 'octet' (the first eight lines) and a 'sextet' (the last six lines), with the second part commenting on the first. The poem is a sonnet - a fourteen-line single stanza form that originated in Italian love poetry and was popularised in England by Shakespeare. Form Percy Bysshe Shelley by Alfred Clint 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 mocked them and the heart that fed ![]() Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half-sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command ![]() ![]() Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone The message of the poem is generally understood to suggest that all leaders, even tyrants, come to the same end and that all power (and perhaps abuse of power) is temporary and fleeting. The description of the statue is a meditation on the fragility of power and on the effects of time. The poem itself, Ozymandias, imagines a meeting between the narrator and a 'traveller' who describes a ruined statue he - or she - saw in the middle of a desert somewhere. Shelley's poem is one of many that is used for GCSE English analysis, along with the likes of Nettles by Vernon Scannell. ![]()
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