There are fifteen poems in the GCSE Power & Conflict anthology.

For your exam, you will be given one poem in full, printed on the page, and you will be asked to compare this poem to another from the anthology.

All of the GCSE English Literature course is closed-book, meaning that you will need to learn at least three lines from each poem.

It is possible to get top marks for this question by making sure that you know the following:

• What the poem is about

• What the poem means

• The methods the poet uses to convey their message

• The links between the ideas of other poems in the anthology

Synposis

Whatever the question is, it is important that you understand what the poem is about. This will support you in adapting your argument to fit the focus of the question. This section includes:

• A general overview of the poem

• A detailed look at the poem line-by-line

• Analysis of the poem, giving Percy Shelly’s intention and message

A General Overview of the Poem

Ozymandias explores the transient nature of both power and memory in contrast with the resolute permanence of nature and of art. The speaker, an uncharacterised voice who meets a traveller who tells the story-proper, relates what he has heard about the wreckage of a statue of Pharaoh Ramesses II, AKA Ozymandias. The poem depicts the Romantics’ ongoing preoccupation with tyranny in the face of the natural world.

Line-by-Line

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

The poem begins with a framing narrative. It will be the “traveller from an antique land” who tells the story: everything which follows the colon in the second line. This creates a sense of distance between the reader and Ozymandias; he is separated by distance (“land”), time (“antique”), death (now just a statue: “trunkless legs of stone”), and then by narrative voice: the “traveller” telling the speaker (“I”), telling us – through the poet. The reason this is so significant is because Ozymandias later insists on being omnipotent, but this distance shows how impotent – how irrelevant – he has become. 

This sense of decayed power and significance is expressed clearly through the juxtaposition of the adjectives attributed to the “legs of stone” in the statue: “vast and trunkless”. Whilst they are formidable, or “vast”, they have become disembodied, or “trunkless”, due to the ravages of time throughout centuries of neglect. The eponymous tyrant, Ozymandias, has lost so much power and relevance that even the statue of himself he commissioned for posterity has fallen into disrepair and out of memory.

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

The lines that follow the foundations laid by the first two lines capitalise on this revelling in the tyrant’s fall. The choice of “desert” as a setting is not only geographically accurate but also a convenient pun: a ‘deserted’ scene. Thus, the anthropomorphic verb choice of “stand” in this context is ironic; there is no life to be found here. The syntax of the sentence that follows, with its stacking of three separate adverbials (“[1] Near them, [2] on the sand, / [3] Half sunk”), the premodifying adjective “shattered” before the subject “visage”, and the impotent verb “lies”, all combine to render the statue’s face somewhat pathetic.

It is notable that this comes first, to foreground Ozymandias’ collapse, because what follows is a clear indication of the sculptor’s intention. The polysyndetic listing of malevolent facial features, “frown / And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”, make it clear that the depicted Pharaoh was indeed tyrannical long ago and this was indeed captured by the artist long ago (“well those passions read”). This is all the more damning and indictment of the eponymous character’s downfall; a reader already knows he is long-dead, long-forgotten, and so we wonder: how can one so powerful fall so hard?

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

The next two lines start with further ironic anthropomorphism: “yet survive” referring to the “passions” of Ozymandias, on the “lifeless” stone. The vigour of the Pharaoh is undermined by the nature of the stone. What then follows is an insight into the sculptor once more: defined by his “hand” that “mocked” (that is, made an imitation in stone of) Ozymandias’ features and the artist’s fire “heart that fed”. Foregrounding the sculptor’s talents in place of the depicted tyrant’s terrible antics is a clear decision on Shelley’s part to make a statement central to this poem’s message: that art survives where human power cannot.

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The next three lines depict Ozymandias’ desired effect on the witnesses to his statue. It is notable that they come this late; the permanence of his power has already been totally erased by now, so it is ironic. He calls himself the ultimate (“King of Kings”) and through imperatives, “Look [and] despair”, directed at other powerful figures (“ye Mighty”), attempts to assert his fearful authority. It is pitiful in its futility, given what we know.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The final three lines of the poem seal the coffin on Ozymandias. The phenomenal anticlimax of the three-word sentence “Nothing beside remains” immediately following Ozymandias’ recorded words on the pedestal, about insurmountable power, is powerful. His statue’s decomposing condition is then reinforced with the nouns “decay” and “Wreck”, and his lack of a rapt audience is foregrounded with the adjectives “bare” and “lone”, and adverb “far away”, attributed to the setting in which he finds himself. He has been forgotten, kept alive only in the statue (barely) and in this new account, to be immortalised (but not the way he would want to be) in this poem.

Writer’s Methods

This section aims to support your revision by providing you with concrete and clear examples of methods that Percy Shelley uses. 

Remember: methods support meaning, not the other way round. You will gain more marks focusing your essays on the big ideas of the poems and then supporting these ideas with the methods that the writer uses.

Form

The poem is a sonnet, inasmuch as it has fourteen lines, iambic pentameter and at least some semblance of alternate rhyme. It is, however, not about the subject of love, as sonnets most frequently are (unless one could, at a reach, refer to Ozymandias’ love of himself or of power). Nor do we find a clear division of sections into octets, quatrains, or couplets. Whilst there is initial capitalisation, and some end-stopping, there is also a fairly prose-like preponderance of caesurae and enjambing lines, suiting the conversational style of the “traveller [...] Who said” it. 

Structure

The most salient feature of the structure is the frame. The immediate erasure of the speaker in place of the traveller in the first line creates distance, weakening the power of the eponymous ruler. The poem then can be roughly broken into sections: a description of the statue itself; then a brief reflection on its skilful sculpting; then a report of the pedestal’s words; and then a resolving ‘zoom-out’ from the statue as a final reminder of his insignificance.

Language

Throughout the poem, the poet employs an almost overwhelming semantic field of physical neglect and decay. We see this in the adjectives, “antique”, “trunkless”, “half sunk”, “shattered”, “lifeless”, “bare”, and “lone”, as well as the noun choices “desert”, “decay”, and “wreck”. The combined effort serves to undermine the small glimmers of power once wielded by Ozymandias: his “sneer of cold command”, his “passions” and his “Works”. Clearly, time and nature have won; attrition is more powerful than rival “Mighty” figures.

Context

At MyEdSpace, we use this analogy to discuss context – ketchup, salt and chips.

If you ordered a portion of chips, and asked for salt, you wouldn’t then dump the salt into the corner of your chips and start dipping each individual chip into the salt. 

When you put salt on your chips, you sprinkle it over, sparingly, so as to give a good coverage of salt across the chips as a whole. Context is just like salt on chips. 

Context is not ketchup – because it would be appropriate to squeeze ketchup into the corner of your plate and dip each chip in (and in fact, that is advised).

So when you’re including contextual information in your essays, sprinkle it across the essay, just like you sprinkle salt on your chips.

Let’s link the context to the key ideas and themes of the poem.

Biographical Insight

Shelley was a Romantic poet, part of a movement that was hugely critical of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ and its obsession with human ‘progress’, instead insisting that the only constant and permanent thing is nature. 

Real-life influence

Owing to the era’s newfound obsession with Egyptology, the remains of Pharaoh Ramesses II’s statue were unearthed – a ruler who took special care to immortalise himself in statues and architecture (the statue and its inscription are real), but a ruler whose downfall was epic and mirrored that of Napoleon (1815).

Comparison

Ozymandias and My Last Duchess 

Both poems explore the psychology and fallibility of tyrants. Both poems use art as a fluid metaphor for permanence and control. However, Ozymandias focuses on the transience of human power in contrast with the eternal omnipotence of nature, whilst My Last Duchess focuses on the frailty of masculinity against a backdrop of incontrovertible power.

Similarity:

Both poems depict the horrifying liberties taken by tyrants in their exercise of power.

Evidence and Analysis 

Shelley’s poem conveys a wrathful ruler whose emotions clearly led his heinous actions. His facial expressions of this ruler (“King of Kings”), his “frown”, “wrinkled lip” and “sneer”, show that his “cold command” was motivated by malice, and a desire for his people to “despair”. The alliterative noun phrase “cold command” and the verb “despair” combine to create a sense of obscurity – a lack of specifics – regarding his actual actions, which in itself is somewhat stirring.

Browning’s poem presents a small-scale tyrant whose implied murder of his late wife and those around her is a demonstration of power out of control. The speaker, the Duke, allows his jealousy to fester and swell in private (“This grew”) before taking horrifying action (“I gave commands”) with horrifying consequence (“all smiles stopped together”), showing the terrifying power this aristocrat wields. The combination of the determiner “all” and the adverbial “together” shows the far-ranging impact of his wrath.

Difference:

The poets present different levels of immediacy in terms of the tyrants’ power.

Evidence and Analysis

In Shelley’s poem, the power once wielded by the eponymous tyrant has long faded.

In his poem, the tyrant’s rule is long over and long forgotten, lost to history except in art. His “passions” are imprinted on “lifeless things”, showing that they have no lasting power even when captured on the statue for posterity, and therefore that Ozymandias’ power has been lost, a “Wreck” that is subject to “decay”, and a relic only of an unnamed “antique land”. These lexical choices reaffirm that the ruler’s influence has been ravaged by time and nature.

Contrastingly, Robert Browning’s focus is on the ongoing and thus horrifying nature of a tyrant’s power.

In his poem, the speaker has already committed a heinous act, but has faced no consequences and continues to wield power. In all present tense moments (i.e. everything outside of the retrospective Last Duchess narrative), he re-asserts his power: issuing commands to his audience such as “sit and look at her” and “rise” and “Notice” – as well as boasting that “none [reveals the painting] but [him]”. This combination of imperatives and explicit declarations of sovereignty make his “object[ive]” of marrying someone new quite chilling; his power – and likely his violence – continue unabated.