"Ozymandias" Summary The speaker recalls having met a traveler "from an antique land," who told him a story

about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native country. Two vast legs of stone stand without a body, and near them a massive, crumbling stone head lies "half sunk" in the sand. The traveler told the speaker that the frown and "sneer of cold command" on the statue's face indicate that the sculptor understood well the passions of the statue's subject, a man who sneered with contempt for those weaker than himself, yet fed his people because of something in his heart ("The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed"). On the pedestal of the statue appear the words: "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" But around the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the "lone and level sands," which stretch out around it, far away. Form "Ozymandias" is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual for a sonnet of this era; it does not fit a conventional Petrarchan pattern, but instead interlinks the octave (a term for the first eight lines of a sonnet) with the sestet (a term for the last six lines), by gradually replacing old rhymes with new ones in the form ABABACDCEDEFEF. Commentary This sonnet from 1817 is probably Shelley's most famous and most anthologized poem--which is somewhat strange, considering that it is in many ways an atypical poem for Shelley, and that it touches little upon the most important themes in his oeuvre at large (beauty, expression, love, imagination). Still, "Ozymandias" is a masterful sonnet. Essentially it is devoted to a single metaphor: the shattered, ruined statue in the desert wasteland, with its arrogant, passionate face and monomaniacal inscription ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"). The once-great king's proud boast has been ironically disproved; Ozymandias's works have crumbled and disappeared, his civilization is gone, all has been turned to dust by the impersonal, indiscriminate, destructive power of history. The ruined statue is now merely a monument to one man's hubris, and a powerful statement about the insignificance of human beings to the passage of time. Ozymandias is first and foremost a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of political power, and in that sense the poem is Shelley's most outstanding political sonnet, trading the specific rage of a poem like "England in 1819" for the crushing impersonal metaphor of the statue. But Ozymandias symbolizes not only political power--the statue can be a metaphor for the pride and hubris of all of humanity, in any of its manifestations. It is significant that all that remains of Ozymandias is a work of art and a group of words; as Shakespeare does in the sonnets, Shelley demonstrates that art and language long outlast the other legacies of power. Of course, it is Shelley's brilliant poetic rendering of the story, and not the subject of the story itself, which makes the poem so memorable. Framing the sonnet as a story told to the speaker by "a traveller from an antique land" enables Shelley to add another level of obscurity to Ozymandias's position with regard to the reader--rather than seeing the statue with our own eyes, so to speak, we hear about it from someone who heard about it from someone who has seen it. Thus the ancient king is rendered even less commanding; the distancing of the narrative serves to undermine his power over us just as completely as

has the passage of time. Shelley's description of the statue works to reconstruct, gradually, the figure of the "king of kings": first we see merely the "shattered visage," then the face itself, with its "frown / And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command"; then we are introduced to the figure of the sculptor, and are able to imagine the living man sculpting the living king, whose face wore the expression of the passions now inferable; then we are introduced to the king's people in the line, "the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed." The kingdom is now imaginatively complete, and we are introduced to the extraordinary, prideful boast of the king: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" With that, the poet demolishes our imaginary picture of the king, and interposes centuries of ruin between it and us: "'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"is a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818. It is frequently anthologised and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem. In addition to the power of its themes and imagery, the poem is notable for its virtuoso diction. The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is unusual [citation needed] and creates a sinuous and interwoven effect (ABABACDCEDEFEF).

Analysis
"Ozymandias" was written in December 1817 during a writing contest, and first published in Leigh Hunt's Examiner of January 11, 1818. Shelley points out that the poem was selected for the book by his "bookseller" (publisher) and not by himself. Despite its enduring popularity, some Shelley scholars have treated "Ozymandias" as one of the poet's lesser works. One major study, Harold Bloom's Shelley's Mythmaking (1959), doesn't mention it at all; but Bloom only intended to write about Shelley's longer poems and did not address many of his shorter works. Others (e.g. Ana-Maria Tupan, see ref.) treat it as marking a Late Romantic concern with the relationships between life, history, and art that is common to Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron. The 'Younger Memnon' statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum that inspired the poem Ozymandias was another name of Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. [2] Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."[1] Shelley's poem is often said to have been inspired by the arrival in London of a colossal statue of Ramesses II, acquired for the British Museum by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in 1816.[2]. However, Rodenbeck [3] points out that the poem was written and published before the statue arrived in Britain, and thus that Shelley could not have seen it.

In line 7, the word "survive" is a transitive verb, with "hand" and "heart" as its direct objects. These lines therefore mean that the passions evident in the arrogant and sneering "shatter'd visage" have survived (outlived) both the sculptor (whose hand mocked those passions by stamping them so well on the statue) and the pharaoh (whose heart fed those passions in the first place). The alternative reading makes "fed" intransitive, the sense then being "the heart that consumed" rather than "the heart that gave nourishment." Thus the pharaoh's insatiable heart "fed on" (was fed by) his passions, a common trope of the Petrarchan sonnet and its progeny. Among the earlier senses of the verb "to mock" is "to fashion an imitation of reality" (as in "a mockup");[4] but by Shelley's day the current sense "to ridicule" (especially by mimicking) had come to the fore. It was already predominant even in the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible; but in the specific context of "the hand that mock'd them", we can read both "the hand that crafted them" and "the hand that ridiculed them". In this sonnet Shelley celebrates the anonymous artist and his achievement, and our poet himself survives the ruins of the oppressor by making a tight, compact sonnet out of a second-hand story about ruins in a desert. The lone and level sands stretching far away suggest the desolation that results from the impulse to impose oneself on the landscape. When Shelley says "nothing beside remains," he suggests the nothingness of space around the ruins and of the ruins themselves, and he puns on the ruins as "remains." That there is nothing beside the ruins emphasises their loneliness and desolation, disconnected not only in space from other physical things, but also in time from the busy and important context in which they must have once existed, as an interconnected part of an ancient city. This sonnet is often incorrectly quoted or reproduced. The most common misquotation "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!" replaces the correct "on" with "upon", thus turning the regular decasyllabic (iambic pentameter) verse into an 11-syllable verse, which a licence that is generally avoided unless there is good reason to indulge in it.

Smith's poem
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows: "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand." The City's gone, Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose The site of this forgotten Babylon. We wonder, and some Hunter may express Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Horace Smith. Percy Shelley apparently wrote this sonnet in competition with his friend Horace Smith, as Smith published a sonnet a month after Shelley's in the same magazine. It takes the same subject, tells the same story, and makes the same moral point. It was originally published under the same title as Shelley's verse; but in later collections Smith retitled it "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below".[5] Smith's verse lacks the enduring appeal of Shelley's, and is not nearly so fondly remembered or so often quoted. Shelley's Ozymandias contains an accessible mystery, and a "moral" that can be pleasantly analysed in a school-room. It is a fairly archetypal example of what constitutes a classic poem in terms of the modern English literature syllabus. On the other hand, Smith's verse may appear excessively didactic or even heavy-handed, to some readers.

A CONSUMERS REPORT This poem is an extended metaphor which compares life to products that are consumed. One may read the poem to be a satire critisizing the the capitalist state of society. Life is a commodity which can be bought, sold and returned if necessary. Everyone with a life is considered a consumer, which is true of the capitalist society anyhow. The consumer in the last two lines says "I'd like to leave it until I get the competitive product you said you'd send". The closing lines of this poem show how people (consumers) in this society are never satisfied and are on a constant pursuit of something better than they already Though this poem was written 75 years ago because, it carries relevance to our modern sociey today. . Another point to take notice of is the use of modern language in the poem - it is not typical of earlier century language. Boths points about the literal context of the poem raise the idea of the strength of the language of poetry and the ability poetry has to maintain tradition while compromising customs as well. this poem seems 2 be very critical of life. it does does not seem 2 be very receptive of it in any way. the poet/speaker seems like he is showing how he has it, but doesnt know what 2 do with it or that he's stuck with it. the last lines 2 me have been interpreted as "wanting 2 leave the final say of the 'product' until after death (the competitive product) has come." it would only be then that one may observe its ultimate purpose & i suppose its impact or effectiveness. nonetheless, this poem really puts a lot of things, primarily, life, in perspective it also manages 2 show life as nothing more than a commodity which can be used 2 its potential, or left alone... I don't like the sound of it.)" refers to a third party, perhaps a legal man on the other end of the line as after the first, brief stanza, the second stanza seems to be a dialogue of one end of a phone conversation between a product tester and the company he is testing it for. Porter was born in Australia in 1929, but after education there, and working in journalism for some years, he moved to England in 1951, and has lived there ever since. He has written very many books of poetry, and has won a number of prizes for his writing. Peter Porter worked in an advertising agency for some time, and he clearly uses some of this experience in A Consumers Report. The product that he is testing in the poem is life itself, and he approaches it as if it were in fact simply something that can be bought and then used or discarded. He does, however, point out its very difficult to get rid of, and even if you say you dont / want it, then its delivered anyway. The poem makes fun of much advertising and consumer-report writing, but beneath the fun there is a truly and disturbingly serious set of ideas. The structure of the poem suggests a series of answers to questions put to the respondent in a questionnaire. The first 16 lines sound like the entries in boxes on the form, but after that the tone becomes slightly more generalized as if the respondent is becoming disenchanted with having to give limited answers to specific questions (there is a parenthesis berating the company for demanding this). The responses then become briefer and follow quickly on each other, but although the language is still that of a consumer report, the focus is more obviously on aspects of experience.

ON FINDING A SMALL FLY CRUSHED IN A BOOK This poem is much deeper than the title suggests. On firstly reading the title the reader feels as though the poet is moved by this simple incident of a crushed fly in a book. However, the poem is rather a reflective one which is prompted by this small incident that follows the opening of the book. The poets feelings are stirred because the sight of that fly reminded him of mans life. This discovery brought into his mind Mans own Book (life) with all its fortunes and misfortunes. In fact its a medatitive prespection which sounds a bit morbid, yet realistic at the same time. Man is regarded from the poets view point a small fly , therefore, our fate ... Biographical Details Born 1808 in Somersby, Lincolnshire.

 Lived a relatively quiet life as the vicar of a church in a town called Grasby. Was the older brother of Alfred Tennyson, a widely acclaimed poet of the day. Changed his name to Turner in order to fulfill the dying wishes of a relative, and in doing so receive money from his will. He died in 1879, having written about 300 sonnets in his lifetime. Style The poem is a structured Shakespearean sonnet, with 14 lines. Although the poem is not visibly split into stanzas, there is an idea change in line 8, as is to be expected in sonnets. Rhythmically ordered into 3 quatrains and a couplet. Although the poems language may be considered archaic today, the meaning still relevant. While the title conveys a reflective, albeit lightweight and informal topic, there is littleof this style used in the body of the poem. Analysis The poem opens with an almost remorseful tone, conveyed by language such as never meant to do thee hurt. The second line continues this mood, by referring to the hurtful act- crushd thee here between these pages pent. Pent is the past tense form of pen- this refers to the fact the pages are not blank, but instead filled with a history, but it can also stand for imprisoned. This opening is considerably strong- it introduces engaging points that seek to interest the reader by introducing a unique and quirky predicament. In the third line the poet then discusses the own fair monument - this represents the memory of the fly. The line Thy wings gleam out and tell me what thou wert; shows how the fly left behind a message. Positive language is used, such as fair and gleam to show that while the poet feels remorse, he still has respect for the character of that which he destroyed. With the fifth line, the focus changes from the concrete (eg. wings) to the abstract memories. The poet expresses how it is a shame that the memorys of the fly have in part been lost. All the remains is half as lovely- conveying to us that the remaining memories are only a tiny reminder of the flys life. These two lines are also the only that use exclamation marks. They are used to stress the relationship between what goes with that which dies, and what is left behind, to live on. In this case memories are what remains, albeit in abstract form.

 The praise for the fly is continued, with the line pure relics of a blameless life that suggests it is almost an angelic being. This is reinforced by the use of the word shine that conveys purity. Line eight marks the idea change typical in sonnets. In this case it is a shift to a more morose and pessimistic tone, shown by words such as doom, and peril. Now thou art gone: suggests that the passing of the fly brought about the doom, perhaps the poet seeks to form an allegory about the flies fate and humanity. Now that a less significant being is now gone that our fate is near. The proximity of our doom is suggested when it is described as ever near and that our peril is beside us day by day In line ten, the poet continues the comparison between humanity and the fly, in starting to describe the circumstances of our doom. There is a new metaphor used by the poet a book closing- the exact circumstance under which the fly died. Also the timing of our doom, described as when we soar away, is also identical to that of the fly. In those two and a half lines, through the use of soar and summer-airs to convey a positive feeling, that the time of our doom will come when humanity is in its prime. In the final couplet the poet presents a difference. When humanity needs its doom, we will leave no lustre- a reference back to the gleaming monument of the fly. There is also a continued reference to a book, with the closing book and the our page of death, helping to further strengthen the link between the flys fate and the that of humanity. Rhyme, Rhythm and Structure The poem has a rhyme scheme of ABBA CDDC EFEF GG. This differs slightly from the usual Shakespearean scheme. Iambic pentameter is adhered to on every line of the poem, is scheme of five 2 syllable feet, each with the first syllable unstressed and the second stressed. The structure closely follows those of the Shakespearean poems, only differing in that the predicament is introduced within the eighth line, not after it. Overall these slight departures from standard form give the poem a stream of consciousness, as if the poet didnt care that he didnt use the proper form.