Both Ozymandias and 'As I Walked Out One Evening' paint different images of how time should be percieved and acknowledged. The two poems agree about the enevidability of time itself however Ozymandias gives a grimmer image of time while 'As I Walked Out One Evening' looks fairly positively at the passage of time. In Ozymandias, the poet describes the ruins of a statue in the desert that crumbles and decays. On it's pedestol it is written "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair."(Line 10-11) The message of the poem is that while humans may think that thier accomplishments mean something, they will all eventually be destroyed by time itself, left to rumble and ruin.
'As I Walked Out One Evening' puts a different spin on this idea. Poet notes that nothing lasts forever in the flow of time but the emotions left behind will continue after we depart from this Earth and our bodies wither into nothing. Even while everything will break and decay, time keeps moving forward and there is no use wasting time in the present. Thus "And the deep river ran on,"(Line 60) serves to say that life will continue onward, regardless.
No comments:
Post a Comment