The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking The Poet Within

Our second two sonnets share the subject of an inscription on the great statue of Rameses II (Greek name Ozymandias): one is by Percy Byssche Shelley and the other by his friend Horace Smith. Shelley’s is more than a little well known, but which ‘Ozymandias’ do you like best?1I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said–‘two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert…near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich 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 decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.’2In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throwsThe only shadow that the Desert knows:–‘I am great OZYMANDIAS,’ saith the stone,‘The King of Kings; this mighty City showsThe wonders of my hand.’–The City’s gone,–Naught but the Leg remaining to discloseThe site of this forgotten Babylon.We wonder,–and some Hunter may expressWonder like ours, when thro’ the wildernessWhere London stood, holding the Wolf in chase,He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guessWhat powerful but unrecorded raceOnce dwelt in that annihilated place.

Of ‘The Grasshopper and the Cricket’ pair, the first is by Leigh Hunt and the second by Keats. In a recent Internet poll (for what it is worth) seventy-five per cent preferred the Leigh Hunt and only a quarter went for the Keats. As a matter of fact Keats would have agreed with them; he thought Leigh Hunt’s clearly the superior poem. One the other hand, ‘The poetry of earth is never dead’ is one of the finest opening lines imaginable. If you have read Keats before, ‘one in drowsiness half lost’ would be a dead giveaway as to authorship. Leigh Hunt’s sonnet scores, we feel, as a whole poem; even if it doesn’t contain such moments of perfect music, the progression of ideas (which is so much of what a sonnet is there to exhibit) seems clearer and more satisfactory. They are both Petrarchan, and both have clear voltas at the beginning of their ninth lines. The Leigh Hunt sestet rhymes cdcdcd, while Keats sticks to the more traditional cdecde.

Of the next pair, Shelley’s is the first, Smith’s second, as I’m sure you guessed even if you didn’t already know. They were both published in The Examiner in 1818 and are both entitled ‘Ozymandias’. They each, as you can see, tell the same story–the opening descriptions being, in their basic outlines, identical. There all similarity ends. There is something dreadfully comic about ‘In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,/Stands a gigantic Leg…’. If Shelley’s sonnet outlasts even the ancient monument it commemorates, Smith’s will be fortunate to endure as a curiosity. His is not a terrible poem, but immensely ordinary by comparison. Perhaps you disagree? Shelley and Smith, as you may have noticed if you have been a good and attentive girl or a boy, have both dreamt up their own rhyme schemes.

Whether you choose to write Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnets in blank, full or slant-rhyme, or adapt or reinvent as many poets have, the form is there for you to explore. I find it hard to imagine anyone calling themselves a poet who has not at least experimented with the sonnet and, like Wordsworth, found–In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be boundWithin the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

So now it is your turn.

Poetry Exercise 19

Write a Petrarchan Sonnet on Electoral Apathy. Use the octave to complain about how lazy and uninterested voters are and then, at the volta, decide that apathy is probably the best response.

Now write a Shakespearean Sonnet on exactly the same subject. Use the first four lines for a description of apathy, the second four for a complaint against it, the third for an admission of your own apathy and then, in the final couplet express the concluding thought that, what the hell, it makes no difference anyway.

If you don’t like this subject, do write your own sonnet anyway. I think it would be a big mistake to leave this chapter without having tried to write at least one of each major form.

XI

Shaped Verse

Pattern poems–concrete poetry: a few words concerning Imagism–gamesome forms–rictameter, rhopalics, lipograms–silly syllabic forms–tetractys and nonet–acrostics and more

PATTERN POEMS

the

QUEEN

can do

almost

what

ever

she

wishes

up down

side to side

the world is hers