"Ozymandias" to express to us that possessions He used very strongimagery and irony to get his point acrossthroughout the poem. In drawing these vivid andironic pictures in our minds, Shelley was trying toexplain that no one lives forever, and nor do theirpossessions. Shelley expresses this poem’s moral through avivid and ironic picture. A shattered stone statuewith only the legs and head remaining, standingin the desert, the face is proud and arrogant,"Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passionsread"(lines, 4-6). On the pedestal of the statue,there are these words, ‘"My name isOzymandias, king of kings: Look on my works,ye Mighty, and despair!’"(Lines, 10-11).However, all that surrounds the statue is a desert.This poem is written to express to us thatpossessions don’t mean immortality, the kingwho seemed to think that his kingdom wouldremain under his statue’s haughty gaze forever,ironically teaches us this through his epitaph."Look on my works, ye Mighty, anddespair!"(Line, 11) becomes good advice, thoughin an opposite meaning than the king intended,for it comes to mean that despite all the powerand might one acquires in the course of their life,material possessions will not last forever. In theend, the King’s "works" are nothing, and thelines inscribed upon his statue are a sermon tothose who read it. This is a poem about art. Shelley used imageryand a very impressive ironical way to write thispoem. Basically, the poem is divided into twoparts; the first eight lines are describing anancient decayed sculpture seen by a traveler. Thelast six lines however talk about the words on thepedestal and the desolate surroundings; hecontrasts the great sculpture with the surroundingemptiness, which gave a stronger feeling aboutthe poem. In Shelley’s work, it described the visage "sneerof cold command"(Line, 5). F...
