OZYMANDIAS AGAIN

 

OZYMANDIAS AGAIN

‘Ozymandias’ is a famous sonnet written by the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) .

Shelley is rightly considered a rebel against the common conventions of society and his rebelliousness was undoubtedly based upon general humanitarian grounds, and upon his desire to regenerate mankind, then suffering from the evils of war.    

The sonnet which is given below is about the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II, the Greek name for the pharaoh.

According to a literary critic Shelley’s poem explores the ravages of time and the oblivion to which the legacies of even the greatest men are subject to become ephemeral.

It is unfortunate that the moral of the poem is forgotten age after age by the mighty rulers of the world and they continue to behave with their innate hubris.

THE POEM

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.'

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G.R.Kanwal

27 September 2024