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What are the poetic devices used in the famous poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelly?

Shelley uses the device of enjambment, the continuation of a sentence beyond a line break. Strictly speaking, enjambed lines do not contain even a pause, including a comma. So in "Ozymandias," lines six into seven are enjambed, as are lines twelve and thirteen before the terminal punctuation in the final, fourteenth line.

Shelley also makes use of imagery, describing the visage of the degraded sculpture of Ozymandias with its "frown," "wrinkled lip, and sneer," and the giant legs that lack a torso.


Symbolism is evident in the vast wasteland that surrounds the abandoned sculpture. Despite Ozymandias's boast "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"—he, too, like all mortals, has passed on, and his "kingdom" is an empty landscape.


And lastly, Shelley employs caesura in line twelve. This break is especially resonant because it follows "Nothing beside remains." This full stop, mid-line, underscores Ozymandias's mortality and the limits of the power of his rule.

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