"Death the leveller" by James Shirley and "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Death the Leveller.

   The statement “Death is a leveller” means that no matter how you’ve lived your life, when you die we are all made equal.  The two poems “Death the leveller” by James Shirley and “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, are expressed in different ways, yet have the same intensions.  They show us that everybody is eventually brought to the same level, death, but Shelley wrote about one person imparticular “Ozymandias”.

    Shirley wrote a poem at the time of the civil war, he was also a follower and supporter of King Charles, the King was charged with high treason but refused to recognise court.  He thought “a King cannot be tried by any superior jurisdiction on earth”, so Charles was beheaded at Whitewall and buried in Windsor.  He was thought of not as the King he was, but as a tyrant, murderer and pubic enemy, even though he was a King he was not protected, it creates a cold feeling like he’s seen death.

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   Shirley began his poem in very optimistic words by using “glories” in the first line.  Shirley extends the military image by saying “there is no armour against Fate”, he’s saying that what’s done is done.  but in the second line he contradicts himself, by using a more definite statement…

“Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armour against Fate”

…these lines are more negative than the first, showing a contrast between the two and is expressed in different ways.  “Fate” has a capital letter so that it shows its importance.  On the forth line “kings” has ...

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