Power of Art
Ozymandias
Ozymandias wants to be remembered forever and was memorialised in a sculpture. As long as the art remains in good condition, it will be successful in its intent:
- ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert’
- ‘Half sunk, a shattered visage lies’
- ‘frown, And a wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’
- ‘Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive’
- ‘survive, stamped on these lifeless things’
- ‘on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ ’
- ‘Round the decay Of that colossal wreck’
My Last Duchess
The Duke wants to control his wife, therefore he keeps the painting of her behind a curtain:
- ‘painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive’
- ‘Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day’
- ‘The depth and passion of its earnest glance’
- ‘Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat’
- ‘Calling up that spot of joy’
- _‘There she stands As if alive. _
Tissue
The whole world is made up of different types of art; books, buildings and humans:
- ‘well-used books’
- ‘buildings were paper’
- ‘An architect, could use all this, place layer over layer’
- ‘luminous script over numbers over line’
- ‘a grand design //with living tissue’