Shelley’s Sonnet: Ozymandias
- May 30 2009: Updated & (hopefully) improved with thanks to Ralph’s comment.
Who was Ozymandias?
When I first read this poem as a high school student I thought that Ozymandias was Shelley’s own creation. But, as always, truth is sometimes more surprising than fiction.
Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1817 in friendly competition with another friend and poet – Horace Smith. Wikipedia offers up a good article on the poem, from which the photo at left is taken.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, here’s what Wikipedia has to say (links and all): “Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. 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.”
Some scholars, the article continues, dispute whether Shelley actually saw the statue before writing the sonnet. (It arrived in England after the sonnet’s publication.) Given the fame of the statue, however, Shelley was probably already familiar with it through description and illustration.
The poem was later published by Liegh Hunt, January 1818, in the Examiner, then reprinted again with Rosalind and Helen in 1819.
About the Sonnet
The copy of the poem I’ve used in my scansion is based on the version published in Oxford University’s The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. I’ve noticed that the punctuation differs from those of other versions on the net. All unmarked feet are iambic. Red denotes a trochaic foot. Yellow denotes a phyrric foot (though, in each, I’ve marked the second syllable as an intermediate stress).
Most would probably consider this a Nonce Sonnet. Nonce refers to any poetic form in which the rhyme scheme is made up by the poet. Technically, Shelley’s rhyme scheme is a nonce sonnet. 
However, apart from the rhymes, things/Kings, the sonnet is close enough to the Petrarchan rhyme scheme to be a minor variation. Ultimately, it only matters if you’re curious about Shelley as a craftsman. My guess is that he set out to write a Petrarchan Sonnet but, in competition with a friend and writing quickly, he decided to make do with the rhyme scheme that most easily flowed from his pen. But that’s only conjecture.
The sonnet is written in Iambic Pentameter; and if you’re not sure what that means or the symbols used to scan the sonnet, check out my post on Iambic Pentameter and the Basics.
Shelley’s metrical variants are well-placed – Stand, Tell, stamped, Look, followed by Nothing and boundless. The trochaic placement of Stand, whether intentional or not, adds emphasis to the implacable fact of the statue’s “trunkless legs”. The trochaic placement of stamp, as with stand, only adds emphasis to the hard, unforgiving, presence. In the final quatrian, Look, aurally and subliminally, is heard in association with the trochaic Nothing and boundless. The meter reinforces the bleak, hard cruelty of the subject matter. The Sonnet is a masterpiece.
Interpreting the Sonnet
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,
These first 7 lines are deceptively straightforward. The sonnet tells of meeting a traveler who describes the “vast and trunkless legs” of an otherwise collapsed statue. Near the feet and legs is a shattered visage (the statue’s shattered head). The lips tell of a martial figure – cold and sneering. From there, a third figure enters the sonnet. First is the ‘I‘ of the sonnet, second is the ‘traveler’, and third is the sculptor – the artist who must have read “those passions” well. There is an interesting juxtaposition in Shelley’s use of the word “survive” which means “to live and remain alive” in reference to “lifeless things”. What does Shelley mean? It is a curious ambiguity that is, perhaps, not meant to be resolved – purposefully ambiguous.
Those passions survive on “these lifeless things”.
On the one hand the statue is a lifeless thing; but, on the other, the passions of Ozymandias survive through the skill of the sculptor – in contradiction to the sonnet’s usual interpretation. Is this what Ozymandias intended? Even the answer to that is ambiguous. And what or who has truly survived? Was it Ozymandias, or was it the art, the skill of the sculptor? Both? The trochaic stamped only emphasizes the durability of what has survived. Perhaps there’s a clue in the next line:
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
There is tremendous compression (elliptic) in this eighth line. Since it’s the shattered visage that the traveler has been and is describing, the hand must be the artist’s, rather than Ozymandias’. (I’ve noticed, on the Internet at least, that many readers misinterpret the hand and heart as a reference to Ozymandias.)
- The frown, the wrinkled lip and sneer refer to the shattered visage of Ozymandias.
- The hand and heart refer to the sculptor.
This is important because it informs the ambiguity of the earlier lines. If the arrogance and cruelty of Ozymandias “survive” on those lifeless things, it is because of the heart and hand of the artist. Art has given them life, not the arrogance or pride of Ozymandias. It is the art that has survived and continues to communicate to the traveler and to the “I” of the sonnet.The most insightful interpretation of the sonnet that I could find (online at least) was by Christopher Nield, A Reading of ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, for the Epoch Times.
What we discern in the face is a coded message. The sculptor, seemingly an instrument of the state, has “mocked” the all-powerful chieftain, meaning both to imitate and ridicule. Lines 6 to 8 are grammatically ambiguous, and different meanings are possible, but one interpretation is that the artist’s “heart,” his sense of compassion and morality, still throbs in the otherwise lifeless head. In other words, love and truth ultimately triumph over cruel, autocratic intelligence. In a way, this story is the reverse of the Bamiyan Buddhas, whose beauty was brought down by tyranny…. Despite the desolation of Shelley’s scene, there is a hope here of emotional and artistic continuity. Basic human nature dictates that, despite differences in time and culture, our gestures can be read and recognized by future generations in our finest cultural artifacts.
What does Shelley mean by the heart that fed? Heart is a synecdochic figure. Nearly all analyses of this poem gloss over this line and I suspect it’s because most don’t what to risk interpreting it. I like Nield’s interpretation and I would take it a step further. Shelley’s line is incredibly compressed (elliptical) if only due to the demands of the form. It’s the only mention of something palpably alive and human in the entirety of the sonnet. It is the heart – the synechdocic figure of the human soul, compassion, and capacity to empathize – that is at the heart of the sonnet and that is alive within the sculptor.
- Note: The word mock has, in its older sense, the meaning of mimic [Shakespeare Lexicon p. 732]. This meaning survives in modern times in the more neutral “mock up”. A “mock up” doesn’t carry the sense of derision or contempt associated with mock. So… Ozymandias’ passions survive in the artist’s “mock up”. (This isn’t to say that Shelley wasn’t aware of the words double meaning.) More importantly, the word fed or feed also had the meaning: “to entertain or indulge” [Shakespeare Lexicon, p. 409]. So, in this sense, the artist’s heart was “entertaining” and indulging Ozymandias’ cruel passions – entertain in the sense of tolerate. [My thanks to Ralph for encouraging me to more closely examine this line - see our comments below and Ralph's alternate interpretation of this line.]
The heart is what fed the hand – the hand that mocked and gave life to lifelessness through compassion and morality – through art. It is because of the human heart that anything at all survived and continues to survive. And perhaps Shelley means to instruct us that art is the highest and most durable manifestation of the human heart.
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.
The final sestet is fairly straightforward, in comparison to the octave, but the genius is in the irony. Ozymandias’ mighty words, rather than attesting to Ozymandias’ immortal splendor, affirm the very opposite of his intentions. The arrogance of man is impermanent. The accouterments of Ozymandias’ power and wealth have crumbled into a desolate ruin! Look my works and despair!
What survives? Only the hand and heart of the artist.
By Way of Comparison
By way of comparison, here is Horace Smith’s Sonnet. Rather than just post it, let’s take a look at it and see how it differs. Such examples are rare, but they can teach poets a tremendous amount about the difference between competent poetry and great poetry.
The rhyme scheme is different.
Simply in terms of hewing to a form, Smith does a better job than Shelley. But that’s as far as it goes. The words that Smith emphasizes through trochaic variation seem at odds with each other and even arbitrary. Emphasizing the word wonder, for example, undercuts the underlying message of devastation and “annihilation”. Not only that, but by this time the word wonder has made its third appearance! Admittedly, wonder had a somewhat different meaning in Smith’s day, but not that different. The emphasis on wonder through amateurish and unimaginative repetition subliminally contradicts Smith’s stated goal – an expression “annihilation” and loss. Possibly without knowing why, the reader is left with a sense of wonder – but also uneasy contradiction.
The trochaic holding is a wasted variant foot. There is no compelling reason to emphasize holding.
Notice also Smith’s personification of the desert in the second line: The only shadow that the desert knows… In effect, Smith is superfluously introducing a second character – the desert. The only reason he has done so is for the sake of the rhyme throws/knows. The effect is to divert the reader’s attention from the central character, Ozymandias’ ruined city. Likewise, when Smith writes, saith the stone, he is unwittingly giving life to desolation: the desert knows, the stone saith…
These unwitting mistakes are the hallmark of a lesser talent. Where Shelley carefully focuses the reader’s attention, avoiding superfluous information (which includes personification), Smith doesn’t. His mention of Babylon, already rich with associations, further dilutes the centrality of Ozymandias’ ruins. In comparing Ozymandias’ ruined city to Babylon, Smith is as much as implies that Babylon, not Ozymandias’ city, is the standard for comparison. Shelley doesn’t make this mistake. In Shelley’s sonnet, Ozymandias’ ruins stand alone and incomparable.
The final sestet changes our locale entirely.
Smith imagines a hunter in the ruins of London. Smith spells it out. The ruins of Ozymandias stand as a kind of metaphor for what could happen to London and its “unrecorded race”. Where Shelly leaves it to the reader, Smith spells it out. Where Shelley’s sonnet gives a feeling of immediacy and co-discovery, Smith’s sonnet has the feeling of a sermon. Smith tells us what to think. Shelley lets us discover it for ourselves.
If you enjoyed this post or found it helpful, please comment!
Patrick, I did enjoy this post. Its an excellent piece of analysis on a fascinating poem. Examining the meaning of the poem through the scansion is useful.
Nield’s comments are a good inclusion, as is the comparison with Smith’s sonnet.
You have distracted me from my own writing again… damn you.
As always, your in depth analyses inform and help me understand these works on a deep level.
Thanks Kevin,
Your comments cheer my up. I’ve been a little blue lately.
Another wonderful post. I swear, these are better than anything I have to listen to at school – not only are they more concise, but more insightful than the typical professor’s spiel.
Thank you again Jackie.
I’d love to be a professor… giving spiels on poetry. Sigh…
I’m sure you could get into an MA or a Phd program if you applied… the professors here at Berkeley say that it is generally a very pure application process and they care mostly about your grades, GRE scores, and writing sample, but not really what you have been doing with your time or how long you have been out of college.
Then again, you might not be ready or able to spend time doing that much schooling? I know most community colleges hire people with Master’s degrees, which only take two years.
But I am sure you know all this! I only thought to say something about it because it seems to me like you could easily do it if you had the time for it.
With regard to the 8th line of Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, I would interpret it as:
“The hand (the sculptor’s) that mocked them and the heart (Ozymandias’s) that fed”
That is, the passions have survived both the sculptor and Ozymandias. Cruelty and tyranny were still present in Shelley’s day (as they are today).
This interpretation points towards the continual struggle of love and compassion against cruelty and tyranny, of enlightenment against ’self as centre of the universe’.
Thanks, Ralph, for your comment! I think your interpretation is possible & a valuable perspective. I also think the idea of a “continual struggle” is inherent in both our interpretations. But Shelley doesn’t give us much to go on. On purely thematic grounds, the reason I opted to treat “the heart” as a reference to the artist is because all of Shelley’s other references to Ozymandias are in terms of ruins. A reference to Ozymandias’ heart would, to me, undercut this.
But, let’s take a look at the sentence without the aside:
I think that part of the confusion in these lines is due to shifting usage and meaning of words between the 21rst century and the 19th century.
The word mock has, in its older sense, the meaning of mimic [Shakespeare Lexicon p. 732]. This meaning survives in modern times in the more neutral “mock up”. A “mock up” doesn’t carry the sense of derision or contempt associated with mock. So… Ozymandias’ passions survive in the artist’s “mock up”. This isn’t to say that Shelley wasn’t aware of the words double meaning. More importantly, the word “fed” or “feed” also had the meaning: “to entertain or indulge” [Shakespeare Lexicon, p. 409]. So, in this sense, the artist’s heart was entertaining and indulging Ozymandias’ cruel passions.
I think its hard, without any indication from Shelley, without a grammatical cue (through punctuation or otherwise), to assert that the hand is the artist’s and that the heart is Ozymandias’s. The conjunction and argues that both the hand and heart belong to the same agent.
Lastly, your interpretation would undercut the possible interpretation that art, and all that it represents, was the totality of what remained to Ozymandias’ “empire”. Though admittedly your interpretation is aiming for a different conclusion – one in which neither compassion nor cruelty are triumphant. That’s possible, even though Shelley makes it clear that nothing has survived Ozymandias’ reign but the work of the artist. In your favor, even if it doesn’t support your reading of “the heart”, is the irony that the artist has, at the same time, preserved Ozymandias’ “cruel passions’ — that is, Ozymandias’ cruel passions “yet survive” on those “lifeless things”.
I was so glad to read your interpretation of this poem. My son has to memorize it for his humanities class (7th grade) and I had many questions about the middle part. I was very confused by “the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed” I like your interpretatoin of it being about the sculptor/artist. Another interesting fact that I read elsewhere, is that there is a double irony here, since Ramses II is one of the most famous of the Egyptian pharoahs (he was Pharoah in the time of Moses) and according to the other post many of his works still stand today. (Pyramids maybe?) So is this a double irony? If you read the poem without knowing it’s about Ramses (as I first did) you assume whoever Ozymandias is is lost and gone thus giving the words on the pedestal their ironic meaning, and also you could read into it regarding every man’s eventual demise, etc. However, knowing it is about Ramses changes it, since obviously there is much that still remains of him and knowledge of him will last as long as there is written history. Of course the artistic treasures will last as long too!
Hi Deborah, I’m glad the post was helpful.
If I were the betting kind, I would bet against this interpretation. It’s somewhat anachronistic. The interpretation relies on the notion that Shelley would have known the history of Ramses II and the monumental building works inspired by him. However, Shelley wrote Ozymandias in 1817 and died in 1822. Hieroglyphs weren’t deciphered until 1822. As the following site points out:
You write:
And I think this is how Shelley wrote it. He wouldn’t and could not have known what we now know about Ramses II. What’s the other post you are referring to? I’ m just curious Others might enjoy reading it.