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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (part 1)

  A. Listen to the poem and read it.

B. Answer the questions.

1. What adjective is used in line 1 to express the ancient nature of the land from which the traveller came?
2. What objects does the traveller tell of having seen in lines 2-4?
3. How is the face of the statue described in lines 4-5?
4. In lines 6-8, what does the speaker say about the "passions" that seem evident on the face of the statue?
5. According to the words on the pedestal, what did Ozymandias call himself?
6. In lines 13-14, what words does the speaker use to describe the desolation of the scene?
7. In what country, do you think, the poem is set?
8. What image of the king emerges from the description of the statue and the inscription?
9. Why did Ozymandias originally believe the mighty should despair when they looked on his works?
10. Why should the mighty despair when they look on his works today?
11. What kind of irony (verbal, dramatic, of situation) does the poem contain?
12. Ozymandias was an ancient tyrant. This poem was first published in 1817. What contemporary allusion might the poem have had in Shelley's time?
13. What is the main idea of the poem?
14. What is the number of lines in the poem? What poetic form did Shelley use?
15. What is the rhyming scheme of the poem? Do all the words rhyme?
16. Find run-on lines.
17. Find examples of alliteration. What effect is created?

C. Read the definition and find examples of synecdoche in the poem.

Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole or a material stands for a thing, for example, "lend me your ears" (give me your attention), "daily bread" (the meals taken each day). You can also reverse the whole and the part, using a word for something when you only mean part of it. America is often used as synecdoche in this second sense, as the word refers to the whole continent but is frequently applied to a part of it, the USA.

D. Why did Shelley write the poem? Read the following information.

Ozymandias was a real king, or Pharaoh, to be more precise. He was Rameses II of Egypt. He was one of the more ambitious Pharaohs, built temples and obelisks, and had over 150 children. The ruins of his statue are at his tomb in Thebes. There is an inscription on the base of the statue. This has been translated as 'I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass my works.' 'Ozymandias' is a version of one of his alternative names, User-maat-re.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822) was an English Romantic poet and colleague of Horace Smith. Around Christmas of 1817 Shelley and Smith visited the British Museum where they came upon a book by Diodorus Siculus. In the book the author had recorded the inscription on the pedestal of the statue. The poets became inspired to have a 'sonnet writing competition' and within a few weeks both sonnets had been published by The Examiner (a weekly magazine).

E. Read the poem by Horace Smith and compare it with Shelley's poem. How are the two poems similar? How are they different?

F. Learn Shelley's sonnet by heart.