Ozymandias

The punctuation in Ozymandias is very interesting and fun. Shelley uses colons throughout the poem. This helps to make the poem stand still longer so that the meaning does not loose effect on who is reading it. The second line she uses a colon to expresses the importance of what a specific person has said. During what this person has said Shelley uses an ellipse to show us that the statement continues, but the words she is writing are all that matters to the reader.
She uses commas for this sole reason as well. The third line has a comma when she states, “Near them, on the sand,” and if there were no commas during this phrase, I think that it would loose a lot of the meaning that it has. Shelley uses a comma on roughly every line. This helps us to see what aspects are important to look at or see.
There are three other punctuation types that Shelley uses. She uses the exclamation point at the end of line 11 to show even more emphasis for what the words are meaning. She also uses quotations marks to refer back to the fact that a specific person is going to be speaking on lines 10 and 11. The last punctuation that Shelley uses is a period at the end of the entire poem to allow us to obviously see that the poem is coming to an end.
Ozymandias is about the rise and fall of Ozymandias. This poem is basically about the fact that all good things have to come to an end. In other words, this poem is about the fact that all governments or power structures will come to an end and become history. It helps to show that the fact that no matter how great something seems, it will come to an end eventually. Shelley helps us to see that Ozymandias has extremely short sighted views and aspirations. I find this to actually be really funny, but Shelley does not want us to laugh about his shortcomings. As your read the poem, we clearly see that while Ozymandias was short sighted in many ways, it is exactly how the world is today. Therefore, this poem can relate back to the things that are happening in the world today. There are always people that have short sights in things that need improved or changed today. So overall, I could say that this poem is the rise and fall of anyone.