Here is a comparison exploring ideas related to the power of nature in Ozymandias and The Prelude.
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Essay
Both Ozymandias and The Prelude are poems which present nature as powerful and sublime. However, Shelly portrays nature’s power to erode its eponymous villain’s legacy, whereas Wordsworth portrays nature’s power to strike fear into the heart of man. Both Shelley and Wordsworth being romantic poets, the landscapes in their poems are imbued with meaning, as romantic poets believed that the natural world was capable of teaching us great truths about our own nature and life itself.
Shelley wrote Ozymandias in the form of a sonnet, typically associated with love. However, unlike a typical sonnet which is addressed to a lover, Shelley’s sonnet subverts the form to critique man’s power and vanity. Shelly, like other romantic poets, were critical of the monarchy and Ozymandias could represent King George III, the reigning monarch during that time. Perhaps the ‘sneer of cold command’ is a subtle allusion to the expression of the rotund British monarch. Maybe contemporary readers would have read Ozymandias as a thinly veiled critique of King George III, who was called an autocrat by members of parliament, rather than a more general critique of human power and autocrats.
In contrast to Shelley’s third person narrative, Wordsworth’s Prelude is written in the first person. The first person form adds tension to the experience of its narrator being terrified of the mountain. It is also written in blank verse which gives the poem a dramatic and serious tone. Wordsworth perhaps intends to suggest that the experience the narrator has when the mountain ‘upreared his head’ is somehow life changing. At the end of the extract there is both the sense that the narrator has experienced something profound but also something so mysterious it can hardly be articulated. The experience puts him in a ‘serious mood’ and his ‘brain worked with a dim and undetermined sense/ Of unknown modes of being’. The phrase ‘serious mood’ implies the narrator doesn’t feel embarrassed by being frightened by the landscape as a reader might well expect, but gives the whole experience serious, considered contemplation. The vague phrase of ‘unknown modes of being’ implies that the narrator has experienced something sublime, beyond the ordinary realm of human perception. And the awkwardness of the phrasing and the use of enjambment are Wordsworth’s methods of signposting both his desperate desire to try and articulate this new and profound experience and his inability to do so–to put it into words we can understand. Wordsworth, like other romantic poets, believed the natural word was capable of providing us with truth and meaning. Perhaps Wordsworth’s deeper message is that the most profound truths are to be found in nature.
Opposite to the immediacy of Wordsworth’s first person narrative, Ozymandias is written in the third person and the narrator’s account of ‘Ozymandias’, the eponymous target of the poem, is second hand, the account of ‘a traveller from an antique land’. By framing the narrative this way in the opening, Shelley subtly diminishes Ozymandias’ legacy and power. Shelley then focuses on the ‘shattered visage of Ozymandias’ ‘trunkless legs’. The phrasing ‘trunkless legs’ sounds comical and mocking. Perhaps Shelley’s intention here is to portray Ozymandias in a way which is laughable. In contrast to the powerful and awe inspiring way Ozymandias wished to be portrayed captured in the words on his pedestal: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair’. Shelley wants to emphasise that there is nothing mighty about the pharaoh now. His empire has been laid to waste by the power of the desert, and all that remain are fragments. This idea is further emphasised in the description of the ‘traveller from an antique land’ in the opening line. The phrase ‘antique land’ implying that the country is one of ruins, not one which inspires fear or awe. Ultimately, Shelley suggests our vanity and determination to stamp a legacy are futile.
Wordsworth’s extract also begins emphasising the power of nature, but not in a destructive sense. The narrator personifies nature as an irresistible woman ‘(led by her)’ curiously parenthesised. The parenthesis here implies that it is something secret, perhaps dangerous. Wordsworth also uses language from the semantic field of bondage: the boat is ‘tied’ and the narrator describes how he ‘unloosened her chain’. The phrasing suggests the narrator is engaging in an act of liberation, and he must be careful not to get caught, ‘It was an act of stealth’ he recalls. Perhaps the underlying message is that the natural world in a psychic sense pulls the narrator out into the water, where he is free from the ordinary bounds of perception to deliver deep and terrifying revelations.
Alliteration also plays an important part in both poems and emphasises the power of nature and its ability to make us feel small and insignificant. In Ozymandias in the final lines there is the plosive ‘boundless and bare’ which emphasises the terrifying nature of the desert’s vastness. Interestingly, the phrase is contained within a relative clause with no qualifying relative pronoun, and this creates some ambiguity: is it the statue or the desert which is ‘boundless’. This is perhaps a conscious choice to reflect the ambiguous nature of where the shattered monument ends and the desert begins, as it is swallowed (‘sunk’) by the sands and slowly but surely eroded away. Then there is liquid alliteration and sibilance in the final line ‘the lone and level sands stretch far away’. The liquid alliteration and the sibilance mirroring the ever shifting nature of the sand and its sense of being 'boundless'. Only the natural world is in some sense infinite, and man’s power is not. Our time is finite.
Alliteration also plays a prominent role in The Prelude, emphasising the power of nature to excite or terrify our imagination. When the extract reaches its volta, the liquid alliteration (which complements the smooth and confident movement of the narrator, who, ‘lustily’ rows through the ‘silent lake’), jars with the harsh consonant sounds to describe the mountain. There is the half rhyme of ‘craggy steep’ and ‘huge peak’ and the repetition of ‘struck’ in ‘struck and struck again’. These harsh consonant sounds deliberately contrast with the liquid and sibilant soundscape which precede it to mirror how suddenly the mountain seems to rise up and catch the narrator unaware. Additionally the repetition of ‘struck and struck’ again expresses his panic and how he races to return to the ‘covert of the willow tree’, rowing with all his strength away from the perceived threat of the mountain. Tellingly the word ‘covert’ implies that the narrator feels like prey as a covert is a thicket in which game hide. Wordsworth is suggesting either he wants to hide himself from the view of the mountain or hide it from his own view.
In summary, both poets portray nature as sublime, alive and far more powerful than man. Reading Shelley’s Ozymandias as a critique of the vanity of autocrats, the message is that nature has the power to humble. Similarly, the narrator in The Prelude is humbled by the vastness of the mountain which ‘towered’ over him. In both poems there is the idea that the natural world has the power to make us feel small and insignificant. However, in The Prelude there is also the suggestion that nature has the power to tell us great truths and see beyond the ordinary boundaries of perception.
Word count
1229
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