Comprehension Level Two

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away

Based on the information in the poem, who was Ozymandias?

• a writer

• a sculptor

• a king

• a traveler

Which words and phrases from the poem best contribute to a sense of setting?

• boundless, bare, and lone and level sands

• shattered, decay, and wreck

• half sunk, lifeless things, and colossal

• legs of stone, cold command, and despair

The person who created the sculpture did not think highly of Ozymandias.

What evidence from the text supports this conclusion?

• “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies”

• “Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

• “And on the pedestal these words appear: / 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings'"

• “its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them”

Based on the information in the poem, what was Ozymandias’s kingdom probably like at the time the sculpture was created?

• powerful

• happy

• small

• bare

What is this poem mostly about?

• A powerful king poses for a sculptor to create a statue of him out of stone.

• A traveler journeys through antique lands and faraway deserts.

• A traveler finds a vast sculpture of a king lying shattered in a bare desert.

• A king is found dead in the bare desert by a traveler passing through.

Read these lines from the poem:

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed

In these lines, what does the word “survive” most nearly mean?

• outlast

• coexist

• live

• display

Read these lines from the poem:

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

Based on the poem as a whole, whom does “the heart that fed” refer to?

• the traveler

• the sculptor

• the speaker

• Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away

What words appear on the pedestal of the sculpture?

• Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed

• My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!