Ozymandias: Structure

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“Ozymandias” is a sonnet, and therefore its structure must be understood in relation to the traditional structure of the sonnet form. Shelley has made this task more challenging than usual by fashioning a unique blend of two types of sonnets: the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet and the Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet. The English sonnet is traditionally organized into three quatrains followed by a couplet. By contrast, the Italian sonnet is traditionally organized into two sections: the eight-line octave and the six-line sestet. Shelley has mixed these forms in complex ways that are initially difficult to discern. Consider the poem’s unusual rhyme scheme: ABABA CDCED EFEF. Arguably, the rhyme scheme most closely approximates that of the English sonnet, which typically runs as follows: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Even though the poem lacks the traditional closing couplet, the alternating A/B, C/D, and E/F rhymes clearly reference the English sonnet’s use of quatrains. From a different perspective, however, we might note how Shelley’s sonnet features two larger rhyming units: ABABA and CDCED. These larger units arguably resemble the longer sections that make up an Italian sonnet, whose rhyme scheme typically runs as follows: ABBAABBA CDECDE.

In addition to blending different sonnet rhyme schemes, “Ozymandias” arguably features two distinct voltas. Named after the Italian word for “turn,” the volta marks a shift in the speaker’s thought or argument. This shift manifests as a change in subject matter, or perhaps as a self-reflexive critique of what came before. Italian and English sonnets both make use of a volta, but they do so at different points. Whereas the volta in the Italian sonnet comes in the transition from the octave to the sestet, in the English sonnet it appears in the shift from the third quatrain to the final couplet. The first volta in “Ozymandias” comes, as we might expect for the Italian sonnet, in the shift from line 8 to 9:

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear

Here, the poem shifts attention from the statue to the pedestal, moving from an image of ruin (i.e., the crumbled statue) to an image of enduring power (i.e., the intact words). However, after quoting the words carved into the pedestal, the traveler’s focus shifts again, this time turning to the barrenness of the surrounding desert (line 12–14):

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The way this shift comes in the poem’s final lines recalls the English sonnet’s traditional volta before its concluding couplet.

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