On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)

Shelley was a Romantic poet and contemporary of John Keats. His “Ozymandias,” like Keats’s “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” is a kind of ekphrasis inspired by antiquity that focuses on the speaker’s emotional response to a work of visual art. In a similar vein to Keats’s poem, “Ozymandias” explores themes such as mortality and the ravages of time.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)

One of Keats’s most famous poems, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a mature example of Keats’s innovations with the ode form. Like “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” this is an ekphrastic poem that describes a work of visual art from classical antiquity (in this case, the subject is the Sosibios Vase).

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams (1963)

An ekphrastic poem by the American Imagist poet William Carlos Williams, this work also turns to classical antiquity, though Williams’s approach to ekphrasis, the past, and even the nature of verse is very different from the Romantic ideal represented by Keats and his contemporaries.