Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the poem "Ozymandias" to express to us that
possessions do not mean immortality. He used very strong imagery and irony to get his
point across throughout the poem. In drawing these vivid and ironic pictures in our
minds, Shelley was trying to explain that no one lives forever, and nor do their
Shelley expresses this poem's moral through a vivid and ironic picture. A
shattered stone statue with only the legs and head remaining, standing in the desert, the
face is proud and arrogant, "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And
wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read."
On the pedestal of the statue, there are these words, '"My name is Ozymandias, king of
kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!." However, all that surrounds the
statue is a desert. Are we to believe that natural weathering and the chance of destruction
due to conquest have dismembered this image of the king and rid him of the
awe-inspiring ability he once possessed.
This poem is written to express to us that possessions don't mean immortality, the
king who seemed to think that his kingdom would remain under his statue's haughty gaze
forever, ironically teaches us this through his epitaph. "Look on my works, ye Mighty,
and despair!" becomes good advice, though in an opposite meaning than the king
intended, for it comes to mean that despite all the power and might one acquires in the
course of their life, material possessions will not last forever. In the end, the King's
"works" are nothing, and the lines inscribed upon his statue are a sermon to
This is a poem about art. Shelley used imagery and a very impressive ironical way to
write this poem. Basically, the poem is divided into two parts; the first eight lines are
describing an ancient decayed sculpture seen by a travele
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