Week 3: Analysis of Shakespeare and Shelley

When it comes to poetry, structures and literary devices are only as useful as you see them applied to their respective poems. Poets and poetry lovers alike work to analyze poems for the sake of discovering the meaning hidden between the lines. For the sake of understanding a little of how to dissect a poem, here are a few brief descriptions of poems featured in Smith’s 100 Best-Loved Poems.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII

In this poem, the speaker is addressing an unknown love interest and using an extended metaphor to compare them to a “summer’s day” (line 1). However, this summer’s day isn’t a perfect one, as it will surely come to an end. By the end of the poem, the speaker realizes that the only way for the love interest to be truly eternal is to memorialize them in poetry that will last for generations, saying, “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (lines 13-14). The overwhelming theme of the poem is the immortality of literature as it represents a person, period, or ideology in a way that has the capacity to endure in a meaningful way through future generations. When it comes to what is important to consider when reading this sonnet or other works from Shakespeare, the rhyme scheme, meter, and metaphors become crucial in understanding his work. Shakespeare’s sonnets are a lesson in creating a limited structure for poems that endures throughout an individual’s work, with both his rhyme scheme and meter becoming imperative to the musicality and the reader's understanding of his sonnets. Also, Shakespeare’s use of metaphor continues through most of his poetry as he compares people and ideas to different tangible descriptions that create vivid images in the reader’s mind, leading to a greater understanding of the intended meaning.

Shelley’s “Ozymandias”

In a similar vein to Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII, this poem’s speaker recounts a story that they’ve heard from a “traveler” (line 1). This traveler describes an aging, dilapidated statue with the words “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” imprinted on its pedestal (lines 10-11). Through these depictions, Shelley is conveying to the reader the uselessness of an individual’s legacy as they are only able to endure as long as they are remembered. However, he also raises the question of the value of such art, as both the physical and artistic legacy of Ozymandias is little more than jagged stone and sand lost to time. When it comes to the structures and literary devices that Shelley uses, it is important to understand his use of imagery and a looser structure. The overwhelming amount of imagery that Shelley uses in the poem creates vivid images in the mind of the reader, both making the meaning of the poem clearer and drawing the reader into the story of the poem. In addition to this, Shelley’s use of a looser poetic structure, using slant rhymes and enjambments, draws the reader through the poem as each line builds upon each other, creating a more Romantic style of poem.