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Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
About Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), is one of the most distinguished poets of the Romantic School of poetry in English. In his short but dramatic life, Shelley appears as a restless and rebellious poet, who stands against authority and promotes nature and imagination. Though he died of drowning at a very young age of 29, he left behind a substantial body of work.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert, Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
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.
Available Answers
- 1.
Whom did the speaker meet and from where?
- 2.
What had he seen in the desert?
- 3.
What did the visage indicate about the person who was in the sculpture?
- 4.
What has still survived on these lifeless things?
- 5.
What do the words on the pedestal indicate?
- 6.
Where do you think the encounter between the speaker and the traveller takes place? Is it in the desert? Is it in the speaker's mind? Do you think the poet has deliberately kept it vague?
6 more answer(s) available.