Desert Island Poems: 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"I've taught this sonnet many times, but it keeps teaching me."

Poem as Lesson

When I taught English in schools (and indeed when I teach English now as a private tutor) there are some poems that I look forward to teaching. It might be that they just sound good, but it’s mainly because each time I go back to them I see something new, or for the reason that even though I’ve taught them and discussed them with hundreds of students, they still hold a sense of surprise and wonder. 'Ozymandias' is one of these poems. In fact, if I were to make a list of the poems I find most enjoyable to teach, they would probably, primarily be sonnets, such as this one. This poem is a testament to the sonnet and what it can achieve. I’ve taught this sonnet many times, but it keeps teaching me. 

Voices

What amazes me about the poem is how Shelley manages so effortlessly to integrate three voices into the poem: the narrator at the start who features for exactly 10 words and an em dash; before the voice of antique traveller (whoever that is) comes in; before we get the words of Ozymandias himself on the statue. In fact, it makes us wonder where is Shelley’s voice? But of course, he is both all of the voices and none of them. The use of reported speech in poetry is much underused and Shelley uses it masterfully here. 

Resonance Today?

What is the poem about? If I had to choose one thing, and reduce it down, as I often have to do for school students, it's a classic case of man versus nature. But, to go a bit further, for me it’s about the transience and vanity and pride of man and how that pales in comparison to the infinite and enduring forces of nature. The final image of the lone and level sands is a perfect example of Edmund Burke’s idea of the sublime: a mixed sense of vastness, terror and beauty. It’s as haunting a last line as you’ll find. But, what’s most striking is how this poem written in 1817 still resonates today. How many world leaders can we say have an Ozymandias-like complex? 

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

I love this line in particular and how Shelley seems to enjoy putting these words into the mouth of Ozymandias the forgotten ‘king of kings’. There is a great irony here, and I must admit that I can often be heard declaiming it once I’ve completed one of my many botched DIY jobs around the house. The only despair we, as readers, are left with is the despair that all our work might not come to anything. 

A Sonnet as a Moment’s Monument?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poem ‘A Sonnet is a Moment’s Monument’ plays on that tradition of using a sonnet to immortalise something, and what’s interesting about Shelley here is that he’s immortalising the impossibility of man ever becoming immortal. There is a complex interplay going on here between the vanity and transience of Ozymandias, with Shelley writing a sonnet which somehow goes some way in capturing the character forever, even if it is the remains of his statue. Shelley, then, weirdly, is immortalising mortality; it’s a poem about transience which will last as long as time itself. 

Last Words

So, these are the reasons I would have 'Ozymandias' as a desert island poem. Shelley, in fourteen masterfully crafted lines, drops us into a desert and leaves us there to think about who we are, what we’re doing and why it may not matter.

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.”