Do not go gentle into that good night

By: Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
'pity this busy monster, manunkind'
By: E. E. Cummings

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:

your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness

--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this

fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell

of a good universe next door; let's go
 Ozymandias
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Ars Poetica

Archibald MacLeish - 1892-1982

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean

But be.
The Word by Pablo Neruda

The word

was born in the blood,

grew in the dark body, beating,

and took flight through the lips and the mouth.

Farther away and nearer

still, still it came

from dead fathers and from wandering races,

from lands which had turned to stone,

lands weary of their poor tribes,

for when grief took to the roads

the people set out and arrived

and married new land and water

to grow their words again.

And so this is the inheritance;

this is the wavelength which connects us

with dead men and the dawning

of new beings not yet come to light.

Still the atmosphere quivers

with the first word uttered

dressed up

in terror and sighing.

It emerged

from the darkness

and until now there is no thunder

that ever rumbles with the iron voice

of that word,

the first
word uttered—

perhaps it was only a ripple, a single drop,

and yet its great cataract falls and falls.

Later on, the word fills with meaning.

Always with child, it filled up with lives.

Everything was births and sounds—

affirmation, clarity, strength,

negation, destruction, death—

the verb wook over all the power

and blended existence with essence

in the electricity of its grace.

Human word, syllable, flank

of extending light and solid silverwork,

hereditary goblet which receives

the communications of the blood—

here is where silence came together with

the wholeness of the human word,

and, for human beings, not to speak is to die—

language extends even to the hair,

the mouth speaks without the lips moving,

all of a sudden, the eyes are words.

I take the word and pass it through my senses

Tāj maḥal / Taj Mahal

By: Sahir Ludhianvi

Translated by: Carlo Coppola & M.H.K. Quershi

To you, my love, the Taj is a symbol of love. That’s all right.

All right too that you venerate this, the valley where it sets.

But meet me somewhere else.

The poor visiting the royal assembly? Absurd.

What’s the sense of lovers journeying on

That road which bears the prints of royalty’s contempt?

Look at the emblems of arrogant majesty, my love,

The backgrounds to this sign of love.

Do dead kings’ tombs delight you?

If so, look into your own dark home.

In this world countless people have loved.

Who says their passions weren’t true?

They just couldn’t afford a public display like this

Because they were paupers—like us.

These buildings and tombs, these abutments and forts

Are a despot’s pillars of majesty,

Embroidery on the hem of Time in that color

Which is mingled with the blood of your ancestors and mine

Who, my love, must have loved, too.

It was their art that shaped this exquisite form.

But their beloveds’ tombs stand without name or fame;

Until today, no one even lit a candle for them.

This garden, this place on the river’s bank,

These carved doors and walls, this arch, this vault—what are they?

The mocking of the love of our poor

By an emperor propped upon his wealth.

My love, meet me somewhere else.

HAIKU
A morning-glory!
And so today – may seem
My own life story
- Moritake

Also, in old Japanese hokku, the morning glory was generally considered an autumn flower. They called it asagao,

“morning face,” — asa = morning, gao = face.

The morning glory is particularly appropriate for autumn hokku because it is so ephemeral, so transient, with

blossoms that appear in the morning and are gone by afternoon. That made a deep impression on the old hokku

writers, because transience — the impermanence of things, was one of the main underlying aesthetic principles of old

hokku, as it is of modern hokku. That came from watching Nature and life, and it came also from the fundamental

principal of Buddhism that all things change and eventually pass away, and we cannot really keep anything, least of

all our own lives.

Moritake, an early writer of hokku, wrote this:

Asagai ni kyō wa miyuran waga yo kana

Morning-glory as today wa may seem my life kana

Like the morning glory

It may seem today —

My life.

It is not very good as a hokku, but it makes an interesting point about the brevity of life.
TWO HAIKUS

The summer grasses grow.

Of mighty warriors’ splendid dreams
the afterglow.

- Basho

On a withered branch
A crow has settled –
autumn nightfall

- Basho

haiku 1: summer grasses grow on brave warriors' splendid dreams the afterglow comes

Haiku 1

The warrior has died and though his dreams are buried with him, the warrior and his dreams will live again.

The warrior is buried under the grass. This warrior once had dreams for the future but was killed before they could be
fulfilled. There's a certain irony in the use of the word afterglow. The warrior can't actually experience it because he’s
dead: probably killed in battle.

Haiku 2: On a withered branch

A crow is perched
An autumn evening

This haiku has more than 30 published and hundreds of online translations. Why so many variations? Why so many
attempts?

Zen

The answer, I suppose, lies in Zen’s ineffability. For Zen’s essence is to understand directly Life’s Meaning, without
being misled by language. Life is what we view directly, no more, no less.

Bashō sees a crow perched upon a withered branch. It is autumn, more precisely, an autumn evening as the dusk
settles in and darkness descends. The air is still or perhaps there is a gentle breeze. Then a crow stops upon a withered
branch. Its crow and tree become one color against the ever deepening blue of the evening sky.

Bashō, like the crow, stops for a moment. And in that suspended moment this haiku is formed.

The Crow, 烏, Karasu

Do I need to say that the crow is a bad omen? In Japan, there is a belief that if a crow settles on the roof of a house and
begins cawing, a funeral will soon follow. Did the gloomy Bashō foresee his own death? Did Basho in his own unique
way presage Yates who wrote, “An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick.” Is there not a little of
Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven to be heard tapping at one’s door?

A melancholy thought, for which I have little to add other than that I love the repetition of the “k” throughout the
haiku which must bring to mind the cawing that Bashō must have heard.
  “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” Summary
o Don’t calmly and peacefully welcome death. The elderly should passionately fight against death as

their lives come to an end. Resist, resist the oncoming darkness of your death.

Smart people at the end of their lives understand that death is inevitable—but, because they haven’t

yet said anything startling or revolutionary, nothing powerful enough to shock the world like a bolt of

lightning, refuse to peacefully accept death.

Good people, seeing the last moments of their lives pass by like a final wave, mourn the fact that

they weren't able to accomplish more, because even small actions might have moved about

joyously in a "green bay"—that is, could have made a difference in the world. So they resist, resist

the oncoming darkness of their deaths.

Daring people who have lived in the moment and embraced life to the fullest, metaphorically

catching a joyful ride across the sky on the sun, realize too late that the sun is leaving them behind,

and that even they must die—but they refuse to peacefully accept death.

Serious people, about to die, realize with sudden clarity that even those who have lost their sight

can, like meteors, be full of light and happiness. So they resist, resist the oncoming darkness of

their deaths.

And you, dad, are close to death, as if on the peak of a mountain. Burden and gift me with your

passionate emotions, I pray to you. Do not go peacefully into the welcoming night of death. Resist,

resist the oncoming darkness of your death.

Death and Defiance

In “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” the speaker acknowledges that death is inevitable—everyone

dies, sooner or later. But that doesn’t mean that people should simply give up and give in to death. Instead,

the speaker argues that people should fight, fiercely and bravely, against death. Indeed, the speaker

suggests, death helps to clarify something that people too often forget—that life is precious and worth

fighting for.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” tries to teach its readers how to face death. It starts with a basic

fact: death is inevitable. As the speaker says in line 4, “wise men at their end know dark is right.” In other

words, they recognize that they can’t escape from death. But that doesn’t mean that these “wise men”

simply accept death. Instead, the speaker, notes they “do not go gentle into that good night.” They resist

death, trying to win more time and more life. The speaker treats this as a model for other people to
emulate. The speaker wants people to “rage, rage” against death: they should “burn and rave”—fight

fiercely and bravely—as their lives approach the end.

One might wonder, though, why the speaker wants people to fight against death if it is ultimately inevitable.

The speaker answers this question by describing a series of different people—“wise men,” “good men,”

“wild men,” and “grave men”—who do fight against death. When these people are confronted with death,

they realize that they haven’t accomplished everything they want to—and they fight for more time. For

instance, the “wise men” in lines 4-6, realize that “their words” have not “forked […] lightning.” In other

words, wise as they may be, they haven’t changed the world or created new knowledge. They fight against

death so that they can have more time and make a bigger impact on the world.

Similarly, the “wild men” that the speaker describes in lines 10-12, have spent their lives in a joyous and

reckless fashion: they “caught and sang the sun in flight.” But, when they face death, they realize that that

they “grieved it on its way.” In other words, they realize that they have regrets about the frivolous way they

spent their time on Earth. Thus they fight for more time so that they can do something more worthwhile.

In both cases, then, death helps these very different people realize that their lives are precious—and that

they need to use their time on earth as best they can. Death offers a kind of corrective, helping them

reconnect with what really matters in life. So even though death is inevitable, it’s worth fighting bravely

against, because doing so helps reveal what really matters in life.

Family, Grief, and Old Age

In the final stanza of “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the speaker suddenly switches things up.

Although he’s spent most of the poem talking in general terms—about “wise men” and “good men,” among

others—he suddenly addresses someone specific: his “father.” This changes the way one reads the poem:

it feels deeply personal. The poem offers universal advice about how to face death with dignity, but it is also

an intimate and heartfelt message from a son to his dying father.

For most of the poem, it’s not clear who the speaker is addressing. The speaker talks about death in

general terms, discussing how different groups of people—“wise men,” “good men,” “wild men,” etc.—come

to realize that life is precious and that they should fight to use their time on earth as well as possible. This

makes the poem feel universal: its advice about how to face death with dignity applies to everyone.

But in the poem’s final stanza, the speaker reveals that he or she is addressing his or her “father.” The

poem feels much less universal after that moment. Instead, it seems like Dylan Thomas, the poet, is talking

directly to his father, trying to offer him encouragement as he faces death. Instead of being a poem about

death in general, it is a poem about family, grief and old age.

The challenge for the reader will be to balance the two faces the poem presents. The reader might wonder

whether it is really a universal poem or more specific and personal. But the speaker delays revealing that

the poem is dedicated to his or her “father” until the very end of the poem for a reason. The speaker wants

to give the reader space to identify with the poem, to think about how it applies to their life, before situating

in the specific, personal context of the speaker’s own life. In other words, it is best to think of the poem as

both specific and universal at the same time.

Thomas wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night" during a very specific moment in Dylan Thomas' life.
His father, David John Thomas, had first introduced him to the wonder of language by reading him
Shakespeare before bed at night. Thomas' father was a grammar school teacher, but he had always
wanted to be a poet but was never able to realize his dream.

Some experts suggest that Thomas was inspired to write "Do not go gentle into that good night" because
his father was dying (though his father didn't pass away until Christmas of 1952).

"Do not go gentle into that good night" Meaning

At its heart, "Do not go gentle into that good night" is a poem about death. The narrator of the poem is
experiencing the death of his father, which we see in the last stanza, or group of lines. Witnessing
the death of his father makes the speaker think about death in a more general way. The first five stanzas
focus on different types of men, and the speaker thinks about how they will have to face death one day,
too.

In the end, the speaker realizes that death cannot be avoided, but it can be challenged.When he tells
readers to "not go gentle into that good night" and "rage against the dying of the light," he's telling them to
not accept death passively. Instead, he tells people that the last thing a dying person gets to choose is how
he faces death. For Thomas, struggling against death is both a valiant—and a human—reaction.

Theme 1: The Unstoppable Nature of Death

Like we mentioned earlier, "Do not go gentle into that good night" comes out of Thomas' experience
watching his father pass away. As a result, the poem's primary purpose is to think about death—or
more to the point, to think about dying. In many ways, this is also a poem about man's last mortal act,
which is passing away.

Given this, Thomas' poem is often taught as a grieving man's anger at death, which has come to take
his father away. The phrase "good night" refers to death—where "good night" references both how we say
goodbye to people and how a dying person slips into a final sleep that they never wake up from.

But more specifically, Thomas' poem tells people to "not go gentle" into death. Here, the word "gentle"
means "docile," or passive and without resistance. in other words, Thomas tells readers they should not
accept death passively, but instead should fight (or "rage") against it ("the dying of the light").

For Thomas, the best way is to face death with strength and power, like the "wild" heroes of old. In
his poem, Thomas argues that this allows dying people to embrace the fiery energy of life one last time,
and in many ways, serves as a small way to triumph something they have no control over in the end. Put
another way: if you can't avoid dying, it's better to go down fighting than to not fight at all!

It's important to note that although Thomas tells readers to struggle against death, this isn't a poem
about triumphing over death. The end result of fighting death isn't victory. The people in the poem don't
cheat death in order to live another day. The truth is that the people Thomas mentions are dying—and they
will die no matter what.
Thus, "Do not go gentle into that good night" focuses on a person's literal final choice: not whether or not to
die, but how they will face the inevitable.

Theme 2: The Power of Life

In "Do not go gentle into that good night," Thomas creates tension between death—which he speaks about
symbolically through images of night and darkness—and life, which he represents through images of light.
For example, take a look at the second line of the poem. When Thomas says "close of day," he's
referencing death. But he also says that people should "burn" against it—and as we all know, things that
are burning produce light!

The act of putting two unlike things, like light and dark, in close proximity to one another is
called juxtaposition. In this poem, the juxtaposition emphasizes the contrast between life and death. If
death is dark and inevitable, then the juxtaposition helps readers see that life is powerful and full of
energy.

Let's take a closer look at lines seven and eight to get a better understanding of how this works. The lines
read, "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright/Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay."
There are two instances of light imagery in these lines: "bright" and "green bay" (water often appears to be
green or blue on a sunny day). These words help describe the "good" man's life, which is full of light and
energy. After all, even though his deeds are "frail"—which means "minor" or "insignificant" in this instance—
they still might have "danced." In this passage, we can see how the living are full of a vital, powerful energy.
Through this, Thomas tells readers that the true tragedy of aging and death is that it takes away the
vitality of life.

Theme 3: The Limit of Time

The speaker of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" is an anonymous narrator whose
father is dying, and he represents anyone who's ever lost a loved one.

But the speaker isn't the only character in "Do not go gentle into that good night." Each stanza of the
poem features a different person at the end of his life: the "wise" man in stanza two, the "good" man in
stanza three, the "wild" man in stanza four, the "grave" man in stanza five, and Thomas' own father in
stanza six.

In each stanza, the type of man mentioned is looking back at his life. He's reflecting on what he did—and
what he didn't do. In most of the stanzas, the men express regret at what they didn't do. For example, the
wise man worries that his "words had forked no lightning." In other words, the wise man—a teacher,
scholar, or some other educated person—worries that his ideas will not live on. Each of the characters in
this poem, in his own unique way, regrets the things he left undone.

Thomas includes the idea of regret in his poem to show readers how short life truly is. When we are
young, we have grand plans for everything we want to do, and we feel like we have all the time in the world
to accomplish our goals. But Thomas argues that time goes by quickly. Too often, we "grieve" time "on its
way," which is Thomas' way of saying that people often want for time to move faster. But if we do that, we
miss out on the opportunities of life. Instead, Thomas is telling readers in a roundabout way that it's
important to seize the day. Time is short and death waits for us all, so Thomas reminds readers to
embrace life rather than let it pass them by.

Poetic devices in Dylan Thomas ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight’

1. Metaphor: Metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two unrelated things by stating that one thing
is another. The poet metaphorically refers to death as ‘good night’, lines 1, 6, 12, & 18. Here, he calls it good
because it a phenomenon that is inevitable which is sometimes a means of easing human beings from the
mental, physical and emotional pain. It is an exit to eternity.
The poetic persona sees it as right, but must be fought against and surrender to. He also refers to death as
‘dark’ line 4. Lines 3, 9, 15, 19 refer to death as ‘dying of the light.’ Light represents life. So, the dying of the
light means life gradually fades of with death. The poet also made reference to death as ‘close of day’ line 2.
This means the end of the one’s life. The poet uses this poem to emphasis the importance of living and why
it is worth fight for even in old age or one’s death bed.

2. Repetition: Repetition is usually used in a poem for emphasis. The poet repeat, ‘Rage, rage against the
dying of the light’ at the end of stanza 1, 3, 5, & 6, while ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ is repeated
in stanzas 2, 3, & 6 to emphasis his subject matter of not giving in to the power of death.
3. Alliteration: Alliteration is a literary device in which words having the same first consonant appear
together in a line of poetry. This appears in lines:
Lines 1, 6, 12 & 18 – Do not go gentle into that good night (g)
In Line 4 – Though wise at their end know dark is right (th)
Line 10 – wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight (s)
Also, Line 11 – And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way (l)
Line 14 – Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay (b)
4. Rhyme Scheme: Rhyme is poetic device which repeats the same or similar sounds in two or more words
usually at the end of lines in poetry. The rhyme scheme used in Dylan Thomas ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that
Goodnight’ is aba, aba, aba, aba, aba and abaa.
5. Oxymoron: Oxymoron is a figure of speech which places two opposing or contradictory words together
to create poetic effect or reveal the truth. Examples: Line 13 – Gravemen, near death, who see with blinding
sight
Line 17 – Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
6. Simile: Simile is the comparison between two unlike entities or things. This uses ‘Like’ or ‘as’ in
comparison. Simile draws simple contrast on natural world or familiar objects. The poetic persona uses this
figure of speech in Line 14 – Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.
7. Euphemism: Euphemism is a figure of speech which uses mild or polite words to express harsh and
impolite situations or scenes. It is simply using pleasant words or phrases to express unpleasant things or
events. In this poem, the poetic persona uses some expressions to mean death which is a euphemism for
death. Expressions such as ‘good night’ (lines 1, 6, 12 & 18) and ‘Dying of the light’ (lines 3, 9, 15 & 19).
8. Personification: In personification inanimate objects or abstractions receive human qualities or traits. An
instance of this poetic device in “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good night” is Line 8 – Their frail deeds might
have danced in a green bay.
9. Metonymy: Metonymy refers to the replacement of word or phrase with a different one closely
associated or related with it. An example in the poem is in Line 2 – Old age should burn and rave at close of
day.
Ozymndias

 “Ozymandias” Summary
o The speaker of the poem meets a traveller who came from an ancient land. The traveller
describes two large stone legs of a statue, which lack a torso to connect them and which
stand upright in the desert. Near the legs, half-buried in sand, is the broken face of the
statue. The statue's facial expression—a frown and a wrinkled lip—form a commanding,
haughty sneer. The expression shows that the sculptor understood the emotions of the
person the statue is based on, and now those emotions live on, carved forever on
inanimate stone. In making the face, the sculptor’s skilled hands mocked up a perfect
recreation of those feelings and of the heart that fed those feelings (and, in the process, so
perfectly conveyed the subject’s cruelty that the statue itself seems to be mocking its
subject). The traveller next describes the words inscribed on the pedestal of the statue,
which say: "My name is Ozymandias, the King who rules over even other Kings. Behold
what I have built, all you who think of yourselves as powerful, and despair at the
magnificence and superiority of my accomplishments." There is nothing else in the
area. Surrounding the remnants of the large statue is a never-ending and barren desert,
with empty and flat sands stretching into the distance.
Form and Literary Devices Used

Shelley uses the first person pronoun "I" to begin his sonnet then cleverly switches the focus to a third
person, a traveler, whose words are contained in the remaining thirteen lines. This was highly unusual for a
sonnet at the time and reflects the poet's innovative thinking.

The reader is effectively listening in to a conversation between two people, one recently returned from a
journey through an ancient country. It is this person's narrative that describes the huge statue in the sands
of the desert, a former monument of a great leader, now in pieces and forgotten.

Imagery

Shelley's evocative language creates some very powerful images. From the second line on the reader is
painted a vivid picture with words such as vast and trunkless..half sunk...shattered visage...frown and
wrinkled lip...sneer of cold command...this is a pretty damning description of Ozymandias (Greek name for
an Egyptian pharaoh called Rameses II, 1300BCE) and reflects Shelley's own thoughts on those who crave
and wield power.

The words written on the pedestal, the stand that once held the statue, now seem meaningless and
rhetorical; it's the statement of an arrogant despot.

This broken, weathered statue lies in a desert, a desolate place that goes on for miles and miles. Not many
people pass through that desert, or would want to, in contrast with the past. A once great leader has been
left to history and will be buried in the sand in time.

Form

Shelley's sonnet is a bit of a twist on the traditional form. It does have 14 lines and is mostly iambic
pentameter, but the rhyme scheme is different, being ababacdcedefef which reflects an unorthodox
approach to the subject.

It's not a Shakespearean sonnet, nor is it a Petrarchan - the poet made certain of its individuality by
choosing not to introduce a 'turn' after the second quatrain. Instead there is a simple shift of emphasis, the
narrator sharing the words on the pedestal that are in effect, the words of the fallen leader.

Alliteration

The occasional use of alliteration reinforces certain words, helping the reader to focus:

legs of stone/Stand (lines 2-3)

sneer of cold command, (line 5)

boundless and bare (line 13)

The lone and level sands stretch (line 14)

The full rhymes and slant rhymes of the short vowel a are also an important factor in the overall sound of
this sonnet. Take a note of their prevalence:

antique/land/vast/stand/sand/shattered/command/passions/stamped/hand/and/Ozymandias/sands.

What this does is produce a harsh almost cutting edge to some lines which is offset by the regular use of
punctuation, causing the reader to pause. For example, in lines 3-5 :

Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

So whilst the regular rhythm persists, the pauses, punctuation and enjambment help vary the pace and
bring interest for the reader and listener. The mysterious ending adds to the atmosphere - all that history,
the works, the dreams of a people, the fall of a once great empire.

What Is The Metre of the Poem?

'Ozymandias' has a basic iambic pentameter beat, that is, iambic feet are in the majority for most lines, the
familiar daDUM stresses in control, first syllable unstressed, second stressed.

But there are variations on this theme and some lines break with this regular pattern. The syntax too helps
vary the pace and the way in which clauses are read. Syntax is the joining of clauses with grammar to form
the whole.

Let's look at the opening two lines:

I met / a trave / ller from / an an / tique land,

Who said: / Two vast / and trunk / less legs / of stone

The iambic feet dominate in both lines but note the first line has a pyrrhic (dadum....no stresses) midway,
whilst the second line starts with the spondee (two stressed syllables).

And the lines ten and eleven, the quote:

"My name / is Ozy / mandi / as, King / of Kings;

Look on / my works, / ye Migh / ty, and / despair!"

The tenth line has eleven syllables, the second foot having three syllables making this an amphibrach
(daDUMda). The rest are iambs.
The eleventh line starts with a trochee (DUMda), followed by a double-stressed spondee, bringing energy
and emphasis. A softer pyrrhic is sandwiched between iambs.

Overall, the metrical rhythm is broken up by Shelley's use of caesurae (punctuation midline) and astute use
of enjambment, when a line carries on into the next without punctuation. The syntax is fascinating, the first
eleven lines a single sentence, so only one definite stop for the reader. Two 'clear' lines, the first and last
are without pause.

More Analysis of the Poem

Ozymandias is a commentary on the ephemeral nature of absolute political power. Monarchs and dictators
and tyrants are all subject to change sooner or later - and Shelley's language reflects his dislike for such
rulers.