“Ozymandias”: A Poem in Motion – Part 1

For many readers, Ozymandias stands at the heart of Percy Bysshe Shelley's eponymous poem. Indeed, this once-great king does command a certain pride of place, but to focus only on him is to risk missing another of the poem's key features: motion. In this essay, I will examine three patterns of motion in “Ozymandias,” voice, time, and space, before reflecting on how a close reading of the poem's motion might actually shift its center.

“Ozymandias” presents a series of voices in motion. The poem begins in the first person with the narrator's “I.” This “I,” however, performs only one act, meeting “a traveller” (line 1), and this action is fairly passive. The narrator does not seek or question the traveller; he just meets him, perhaps through a chance encounter. We learn no more about the narrator “I” or his actions before he fades into the background and becomes part of the listening audience.

The voice then shifts to the “traveller from an antique land” (line 1). We know very little else about him, and even this phrase does not tell us much. Is he “from” an antique land in the sense that he is a native of a foreign country, or has he merely traveled to some distant place and come back? We cannot tell, but unlike the narrator, the traveller has something to say, and his speech comprises the remainder of the poem, nearly thirteen lines. He describes a scene he has encountered in his travels, a “colossal” yet broken and decayed statue (line 13), once great but now only “lifeless” pieces of stone lying in a desert (lines 7, 3).

In the midst of the traveller's account, however, the poem's voice changes again. There are words inscribed on the pedestal of this crumbled monolith, and in them we hear a third voice, ringing out through time, the voice of an ancient king: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (lines 11-12). These are powerful words. A first person declarative statement names the man who desires to speak for all eternity. A superlative proclaims him to be the ruler of all kings. An imperative offers a challenge to look upon his Works (note the emphatic capital), but this challenge does not apply to everyone, only the Mighty, compared to whom he is even more powerful. Then these Mighty (again note the capital; these people are great indeed) must despair, for they shall never prove a match for Ozymandias.

Is this a threat? Is Ozymandias planning to conquer them all? We do not know, but his is a domineering voice, a sneering voice to match his statue's “sneer of cold command” (line 5). Suddenly, however, the king's voice fades, and we hear the traveller once again as he completes his description and the poem ends. We do not return to the narrator.