Ozymandias Questions and Answers

OZYMANDIAS

1.Whom does the poet meet?

A traveller from an antique land.

2.What kind of a place is the land visited by the traveller?

It’s a desert.

3.What does the poet mean by ‘Two vast and trunk less legs of stone’?

Just two huge legs of stone without a body.

4.What else did the traveler find in the sand?

He found a visage half sunk.

5.How was the visage?

It had a frown and a wrinkle on the lip. There was a sneer of cold command.

6.Explain:....that its sculptor well those passions read

The sculptor read those passions well and sculpted it on the visage or the face of the statue.

7.What is the only thing remaining in the vast desert?

The trunkless legs, the visage and the words on the pedestal.

8.What do the words tell us about the King?

He was a proud person

9.What lesson did you learn from the poetry?

Nothing lasts forever.

10.What features on the King’s face tell that he was proud?

He had a frown and a wrinkled lip on his face. His face also had a sneer of cold command.

11.What else tells that he was proud?

The inscription on the pedestal: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on

my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

12.Identify the Figures of speech in the poem

The entire poem is Metaphorical where there is implied comparisons between the King and

human attitude.

King of Kings is a Hyperbole . An exaggerated statement meant for emphasis.

‘Look on my works, ye Mighty , and despair!” Here it is an irony, where the King is boastful

of his achievements but what remains is stretches of sand.

13.What happens to people who are proud?

Nothing remains of them except evidences that they were proud.

14.What should be the qualities that achievers should imbibe?

They should be humble about their achievements and not boastful.

15.What will happen then?

Achievements and our name will not be forgotten by the sands of time. It will always be remembered.

16.Discuss the value of the poem.

The poem reminds powerful people that their power is only temporary. However much powerful people may wish to think that their power is immortal, they are only deceiving themselves. Earthly power is mutable/changeable, and indeed all human beings need to remember this lesson.