Petrarch's sonnets "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley and "When I consider how my light is spent" by John Milton both consider the legacy of a man after death. However, both poems talk about a man's legacy from a very different perspective and come to their own conclusions. In “Ozymandias,” a traveler describes a broken statue of King Ozymandias (the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II) and the barren ruins surrounding the statue. Ozymandias believes his legacy will last forever. Throughout the sonnet, Shelley implies that legacies are fleeting and that even the most powerful men fall before the test of time. “When I consider how my light is spent” concerns the speaker's internal reflection on his legacy as he worries about whether or not God would approve of it. The poem comes to the conclusion that a man does not need to have an impressive heritage to be a good servant of God. They just need to be willing to serve God to make him happy. Clearly, these poems, while both contemplating a man's legacy, show different ways of feeling how a man may feel about his legacy (arrogance or anxiety). However, in the end, both poems conclude that a legacy is ultimately of little importance. The two poems show two different ways someone can think about their heritage. In Shelley's "Ozymandias", Ozymandias is arrogant about his legacy assuming that not only will it last forever, but that it will impress future viewers. This impression is mainly given by the quotation marks around the inscription on the statue because they imply that these are the words of the Pharaoh. By being called “the king of kings” (Shelley, 10 years old), we feel his immense pride, because being the king of kings is the highest possible level in the scale of the social hierarchy. Hi...... middle of paper ......tion until God needs it. Milton comes to the conclusion that God does not care whether or not you entrust him with an inheritance. He only wants his servants to be ready to serve him. In conclusion, Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" and John Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" both contemplate the importance of legacy and come to the conclusion that when all things considered, a legacy doesn't matter. Both use multiple voices and other literary techniques to enhance and highlight their ideas. However, the two sonnets have different reasons for their conclusion. For Shelley this is because over time an inheritance fades away, while Milton believes that an inheritance is not important to God and therefore is not important to him. /guide/238972http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174016