Eternal Nature, Mortal Man: A Comparison of Prelude and Ozymandias
Wordsworth’s Prelude and Shelley’s Ozymandias
How do Wordsworth and Shelley invoke the power of nature in the poems Prelude and Ozymandias?
Boat Stealing (excerpt from The Prelude) (1799)
Cite from hereI dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And as I rose upon the stroke my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan –
When from behind that rocky steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge cliff,
As if voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck, and struck again,
And, growing still in stature, the huge cliff
Rose up between me and the stars, and still,
With measured motion, like a living thing
Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the cavern of the willow tree.
There in her mooring-place I left my bark,
And through the meadows homeward went with grave
And serious thoughts; and after I had seen
That spectacle, for many days my brain
Worked with a dim and undetermined sense
Of unknown modes of being. In my thoughts
There was a darkness – call it solitude,
Or blank desertion – no familiar shapes
Of hourly objects, images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields,
But huge and mighty forms that do not live
Like living men moved slowly through my mind
By day, and were the trouble of my dreams.
Ozymandias (1977)
Cite from hereI 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.”
Wordsworth’s and Shelley’s poems show how they respect nature. Both poets use the sublime to display and reflect how tiny humans are when we stand in front of nature. In The Prelude, Wordsworth describes the relation between the lake, the cliff and humans; in Ozymandias, Shelley describes the relation between the desert and the arrogant king. The two poems have similarities and differences in accentuating nature’s power.
In terms of similarities of the two poems, Wordsworth and Shelley used the sublime. Wordsworth used the spectacular and huge image of lake and cliffs to bring out how small and weak human beings are . Moreover, Shelley applied a king statue as a powerful symbol, and the symbol was destroyed by the desert. Both of them want to tell readers that nature is powerful and strong, and humans, even those who were great before, are not able to holdout the power and should face nature with awe, terror, respect, humbleness and admiration.
On the other hand, it is interesting to compare the differences between the two poems. Although both poets use first person narrative, Wordsworth describes in a subjective way, and Shelley describes in an objective way. The former creates the person’s emotions inside themselves, such as scariness, despair, shock and awe. The latter presents nature’s influence on the powerful symbol, Ozymandias’ statue. Furthermore, Wordsworth displays nature’s strength from static scene to dynamic scene. Readers follow the narrator’s view to experience the journey from the lake side to the center, the cliff, the willow trees and finally his home with sky and stars. He uses metaphor and personification for a huge and mighty form of mountain to make readers sink into his fearful emotion.
On the other hand, Shelley evokes how humans and royal honor are so fragile when they come to the desert. He uses a shattered statue decayed by sands in the desert to reflect the truth: no matter how glorious and powerful the king was, there is nothing remain in a time river and under nature’s strength. He compares nature’s and the king’s greatness, and ironically the king lost to the nature. Moreover, Shelley lets the traveler as a bard or story teller talk about the statue wreck sunk in the sands to increase the ironic elements.
In summary, the two poets use the sublime, a typical characteristic of romantic poems to send messages about their admiration for nature. Moreover, Wordsworth makes a huge mountain as a human with choice and movement to express nature’s force, whereas Shelly uses tiny grains of sand or a desert destroying the king statue to show nature’s power. They exhibit their respect to nature and that humans should be humble and have awe to nature.