Читать книгу English for Life Reader Grade 9 Home Language - Elaine Ridge - Страница 17

Pre-reading
1.	Shelley the poet was also a revolutionary political activist in the early nineteenth century. He was implacably opposed to tyranny in any form. At the time, major archaeological finds had been made in Egypt and other countries of the near east. Shelley went to see the statue of the mighty Pharaoh Rameses II, also known as Ozymandias, in the British Museum. How would you expect someone of his political views to respond?
During reading
2.	Most of the poem is in the voice of the “traveller from an antique land”. He tells a dramatic story. Be alert to how you would read the poem aloud for the same dramatic effect.

Ozymandias

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.

antique – ancient

passions – inner feelings of this arrogant ruler

pedestal – base on which the statue stands

sneer – contemptuous expression

stamped – expressively carved

trunkless – without the main part of the body

visage – image of a face carved in stone

Post-reading
3.	What would your response be to seeing “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” standing in the desert?
4.	The statue’s face is lying in fragments half sunk in the sand, but its features are clear enough to show what kind of person he was. What clues to his personality can you find in lines 4-8? Describe him using this evidence.
5.	Which people did Ozymandias intend the statue to impress and scare off? Quote the words from the text on the pedestal which make this plain.
6.	You have heard of global warming and the danger of good, fertile land becoming desert from drought. Ozymandias’s boasting message is “Look on my works”, but all we can see now is desert. What do you think this massive statue looked over when Ozymandias was at the height of his power?
7.	The last three lines suggest the emptiness of the scene. The ruins of the statue are a “colossal wreck” in the midst of it. “Colossal” means huge, but it brings to mind the awe-inspiring Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, built to celebrate a military victory. It was a massive statue, over 30 metres high, and stood with legs astride on two columns at the entrance to the harbour of the Greek island of Rhodes. All ships entering or leaving had to pass between its legs. It toppled in an earthquake more than 2200 years ago. How does this reference add to the poem?
8.	‘Time is the enemy’ runs the modern cliché. But it is a hard fact that time is not on the side of tyrants. However great they are, they will die. However powerful, their power will eventually be successfully challenged. Which word in the first line offers us the perspective of time on Ozymandias? How do you think it suggests we should see him?