‘Ozymandias’ Paragraph

In the sonnet ‘Ozymandias’, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a message about human ambition was shown through the expert use of the volta, which is the sudden shift in tone and emotion in the sonnet. The poem ‘Ozymandias’ tells the tale of a great king who achieved much in his time, but now all that remains of his legacy is a broken, forgotten statue. The volta in this sonnet is in the last three lines of the sestet: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” This volta does not just have a change in emotion, it also contains a change in perspective, and becomes third person omniscient. This change in perspective also follows a change in tense in the volta, to become present tense. The change in perspective makes the lines separate from the rest of the sonnet, and allows the writer to really add emphasis to the lines, which describe the surroundings of the statue; bland and bare. This also adds emphasis to the meaning of the poem, that no matter how much you achieve, it will eventually all turn to dust. The change in tense from past to present tense shows how as time goes on, less and less will remain, and that time will destroy all ambition.