Notes on the Sea and Ozymandias - 776 Words

Ozymandias Points to remember: 1. The statue of Ozymandias stands as a metaphor (symbol) of the temporal (not permanent) nature of political power. Time and history have a destructive power that brings all to an end. 2. The statue in the poem also symbolizes pride or ‘hubris’ (arrogance) of all humanity in any form it may take. 3. Material possessions do not last. 4. The poet points out to us that all that is left is art (the remains) and a few words (what is written on the pedestal). It seems therefore that art and language outlast the legacies of power. (see Shakespeare’s Sonnet LX) 5. In describing Ozymandias the poet distances him from our present reality in fact the narrator meets a traveller who describes the†¦show more content†¦Even the way the verses are placed like waves to completely immerse the reader into the atmosphere, shows imagination. In the first two stanzas the atmosphere at sea is wild and frightening. The poet describes the wild sea as if it is a ‘hungry dog’. This is a metaphor that carries along throughout the poem. The poet takes the qualities of a dog and transfers them to the sea, for example the sea is ‘giant and grey’ and it has ‘clashing teeth’ and ‘shaggy jaws’. The poet makes us imagine the atmosphere at sea when it is rough and dangerous. The repetition of the word ‘bones’ conveys an idea of rocks being eroded by the sea as it gnaws the rocks or else we are reminded of the bones of those whose life ended at sea. In the second stanza the rough sea becomes a stormy sea and the dog is now angry. The waves crash on the rocks and we can imagine the sea spray in the metaphor, ‘shaking his wet sides over the cliffs’. The poet also describes sounds in an imaginative way reminding us of the sounds made by a dog, ‘snu ffs and sniffs’ and ‘howls and hollos’. These alliterations emphasise the scary atmosphere with a kind of death-like omen. Even the moon in the sky seems to be ‘rocking’ because the wind is very strong and clouds are flying fast. There is a sudden contrast in stanza three, where the sea calms down and the ‘dog’ is sleeping peacefully. The atmosphere is calm and we imagineShow MoreRelated An Analysis Of British Literature Essay2728 Words   |  11 Pages/ Signifying nothing.quot; Macbeth thought life had no purpose and there was no afterlife. He compared life to being on quot;the banks and shoal of time,quot; because he life as an insignificant sand bank which would be covered over by the vast sea of time and eternity. Shakespeare used the character of Macbeth to show that if a person sacrifices his integrity and morals, religion is meaningless and the persons life has no purpose. Macbeths lack of belief in the afterlife was a sign of justRead MoreEssay On Anne Bradstreet2057 Words   |  9 Pagesnow in comparison to Biblical times. She feels that men just waste their limited days, â€Å"Living so little while we are alive.† While nature functions in cycles, man only has one chance. Once he dies, his time is over. As a Puritan, Anne Bradstreet notes that it is only man’s Earthly life that is brief, for â€Å"man was made for endless immortality.† In next section, the poet writes about sitting by a beautiful flowing river. She watches the fish swimming around and admires their ability to travel toRead MoreLiterary Group in British Poetry5631 Words   |  23 PagesAestheticism, and the Yellow 1890s 6.3 Comic verse 7 The 20th century 7.1 The first three decades 7.1.1 The Georgian poets and World War I 7.1.2 Modernism 7.2 The Thirties 7.3 The Forties 7.4 The Fifties 7.5 The 1960s and 1970s 8 English poetry now 9 Notes 10 See also 11 References 12 External links [edit]The earliest English poetry Main article: Old English poetry The first page of Beowulf The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cà ¦dmon (fl. 658–680), who