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Cameron Tenn
Per. 2
AP English 12
January 19, 2016
The Eternal Clock: an Open Letter
"Ozymandias King of Kings"(9), we are looking at your works and we feel your
despair. His once beautiful kingdom has been left to ruins, and been covered by the
sands, "Nothing beside remains"(11) other than a broken statue, showing how not
even the signature on his masterpiece could last. Ozymandias kingdom have been
gone for some time now, and his legacy turned sour. All that was done is undone,
and such is how time works. Time will move forward and no matter what anyone
does and very little will leave an impact on time and the unforgiving eternal clock of
the planet. Experience shows us that people will not remember what you said or did,
only how you made us feel, and rulers such as yourself, are the very examples of
this. People such as Henry the VIII whom we remember as a tyrant for striking fear
into his potential new wives while not remembering his beautiful rule over england.
people such as Maximilien Robespierre, one of the leaders of the french revolt. We
remember him as an influential political figure, when he was a lawyer who broke the
law. What you do will be washed away by time as the dessert has washed away
what was most likely Ozymandias a beautiful city, and turned it into "level sands
[which] stretch far away."(14) Only now your statue remains "two vast and trunkless
legs of stone"(2) jutting from the death, motionless unable to escape just as we
cannot escape time. The torso which holds the heart is also gone: the heartbeat of
the poem, written in Iambic pentameter, reminds us that Ozymandias was heartless
and cruel. His broken face, whose angry expressions remind us of his legacy, and

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yet reminds us that no matter what anyone does, time is better than us all. His
inscription reminds us who he was, wrinkled frown, (5)and a sneer of cold
command (5)remind us how he ruled, angrily and cruely. And yet it is gone now.
Nothing is forever, Ozymandias should not have treated things as though they were,
for even now as his "shattered visage"(4) reminds us, "Nothing Beside remains."(11)