Favourite Poems: Ozymandias

I realize that, in my "favourite poems" series, I've concentrated on poems which aren't particularly well-known. For the obvious reason: because I feel they haven't got the attention they deserve.

But that's not to say I don't love the more famous anthology pieces. I do, in most cases. I fully agree with Arthur Quiller-Coach, the editor of the first Oxford Book of English Verse: "Having set my heart on choosing the best, I resolved not to be dissuaded by common objections against anthologies—that they repeat one another until the proverb "good things are worth repeating" loses all application—or perturbed if my judgement should often agree with that of good critics. The best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so; nor had it been any feat to search out and insert the second-rate merely because it happened to be recondite."

"Ozymandias" by Shelley is a poem that is deservedly famous. Probably you all know and love it already, so I won't presume to "Ozymandias-splain" it to you. I just wanted to comment, not on the main virtues of the poem, but some incidental points that occur to me:

1) I absolutely love the first line. It's one of my favourite opening lines in poetry. I like the indirectness of it. In a fourteen-line poem, Shelley don't "cut to the chase": he uses a simple "frame narrative" (and I love frame narratives). The glory of Ozymandias is given to us at two removes: there is the remove of time, but also the remove of a second-hand account. This adds, I think, to the delicious sense of dimness and remoteness.

2) Again on the first line, I really love the fact that Shelley doesn't name Egypt, He simply call it "an antique land". I personally believe vagueness is often very effective in creating poetic effects.

3) The anti-climax of the last line is magnificent. Most poems build to a climax, and (in my view) most poems always should. But occasionally, a poem does quite the opposite, and very effectively-- as in this case.

Shelley seems to have been a pretty awful human being, both ideologically and (more importantly) personally. He treated his first wife so cruelly, it does diminish my pleasure in his poetry. But his genius can't be doubted.

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.