Power In Ozymandias

The consequences of time and nature on power and art in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”.
The poem “Ozymandias”, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, is a sonnet of fourteen lines, metered in iambic pentameter, which explores many issues and possible interpretations. It talks about the disappearance of powerful civilisations and leaders. Everything and everyone dies someday, except good art, could be a one-sentence summary of the poem. It explores the way that nature can create or destroy with the same strength, or the fact that time always wins. It is impossible to do something against this fatality. “Ozymandias” is an ancient Greek name for Ramses II from Egypt. Ramses II was known for his big constructions like the temple of Abu Simbel.
The fact that the statue of Ozymandia is a “colossal wreck” (13), “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” (2), clearly says that things do not last forever. But it does not only shows a statue that goes throw time and nature with some damages, but also the power, the ambitions and the pride that are transmitted through it, “those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things” (6-7). Through this; the poem also intimates that kingdoms or all political regimes will not last forever even if they build big statues or other form of art to show their power. The statue has not always been alone standing in the desert. There must have been something else nearby, something that has disappeared because now “the lone and level sands stretch far away.” (14). There is also a kind of opposition between life and death. The statue is considered as a “lifeless thing” (7), but on it words are written and this words survived time everything around
The poem involves how art is depending on nature to be build and how nature can take back its components. The way that the statue is personified: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.” (2-3), really demonstrates the importance of nature in art, but not only for sculpture. It suggests the antagonism in the relationship between art and nature. Nature furnishes the sculptor with the material they need, but nature can also destroy what was creating from it. This two lines followed by “Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies” (3-4) describe a statue with the half of the face destroyed in the middle on the desert. Most people, when they think about desert, imagine a hot and immense place with some mirage. But suddenly there is a statue with nothing else around. The culture and civilisation that create it had disappeared like the half of the statue’s face. The four lines following: “…whose frown/ And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command/ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things/ The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed” (4-7), suggests the ability of art to preserve the passions and the feelings that are transmitted with art over several years. This contrasts with the statue’s