Ozymandias

-Oz really enjoys the irony of that poem. Both for what it means to say, and because it references an oz in a manner showing his immortal greatness. Flattery gets you everywhere. We think of things that are seemingly a pinnacle of greatness today, not realizing that for all our boasts and thoughts of self importance that soon we will only be a faded memory, if that. Greatness today, sad broken down statuary 2000 years down the road. What do you think will be left of New York in the year 4000 A.D.?

5] lip Bod. Shelley MS e.4; lips 1819

6] Lines 6-8 pose some difficulty, but "survive" (7) must be a transitive verb whose object is "The hand" and "the heart" (8). The "passions" on Ozymandias' face, that is, survive or live on after both hand and heart. "The hand that mocked them" seems to be the sculptor's hand, delineating the vainglory of his subject in "these lifeless things"; and "the heart that fed" must be Ozymandias' own, feeding on (perhaps) its own arrogance. Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews suggest that line 8 ends with an ellipsis: "and the heart that fed [them]" (that is, those same passions that are the referent of the pronoun "them" governed by "mocked" (The Poems of Shelley, II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]: 311).

9] these words appear: 1819; this legend clear Bodl. Shelley MS e.4.

10] Ozymandias: Osymandias, Greek name for the Egyptian king Rameses II (1304-1237 BC). Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History (trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 303 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I, 47), records the inscription on the pedestal of his statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of the Nile river from Luxor) as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where