Analyzing Shelley and Smith’s Poems, “Ozymandias” and “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite…” “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818) 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. “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below” by Horace Smith (1818) In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desert knows: “I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone, “The King of Kings; this mighty City shows “The wonders of my hand.” The City’s gone, Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose The site of this forgotten Babylon. We wonder, and some Hunter may express Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place. Shelley and Smith wrote their poems as a competition Shelley’s poem was published first, then Smith’s in the same magazine Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramesses the II Ramesses the II reigned from1279 to 1213 BC (before Christ) and was known as Ramesses the Great Shelley’s use of the name Ozymandias makes him sound more exotic, and he calls him a king instead of a pharaoh, perhaps for the sake of his audience The first impression of Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem is one that is described to the narrator by the traveler

Shelley describes a desolate and solitary place where a great kingdom once stood The imagery presented by Shelley is that of a fallen king that once ruled with absolute authority The crumbled statue represents a cruel ruler’s dream of power and its lasting place alongside eternity, which has been reduced to a traveler’s curiosity, and further emphasized in the ironic words on the pedestal The traveler says the “sneer and the cold command” on the statue’s face is the only remnant of this ancient civilization’s ruler Shelley ends his poem with a sense of how nature is eternal, which he portrays in the vastness of the desert’s sands The theme in Shelley’s poem seems to be that nothing lasts forever, even the most powerful have to fade and decay, and with time their greatness and power, too, will be forgotten Smith’s poem takes a different perspective, starting with an image of a “gigantic Leg,” perhaps suggesting that the imagery Shelley presents in his poem does not have a leg to stand on Smith’s poem is the more playful one, subtly referencing Shelley toward the end of it, especially when he describes the Hunter, which speaks partially to Shelley and some future Hunter portrayed as coming across, in Shelley’s case, a bauble or trinket such as that of ancient Egypt or of Ramesses the II in a local shop, and in the future Hunter’s case, that of actual ruins of London, and is then left to wonder what people inhabited that ancient land Both poems briefly share the same setting, which was inspired by the actual transportation of Ramesses the II’s statue to Europe and the Temple of Ramesses the II’s ruins located on the West Bank of the Nile While Shelley maintains the narrator’s perspective, Smith changes from describing the statue to a narrative that explains how imagination is the only thing left when wondering about ancient civilizations Both poets use imagery to represent how the ruins, which once portrayed power and demanded respect, are now rendered a curiosity References Percy Bysshe Shelley. (1818). “Ozymandias.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias David Mikics (2010). “Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Ozymandias,’ A Poem to Outlast Empires.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69503/percy-bysshe-shelley-ozymandias Horace Smith. “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.” (1818). http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/RCOldSite/www/rchs/reader/smith.html Poem of the Week at www.potw.org for Smith’s poem, http://www.potw.org/archive/potw192.html Poetry Atlas at www.poetryatlas.com for Smith’s poem, http://www.poetryatlas.com/poetry/poem/604/on-a-stupendous-leg-of-granite.html