The two poems, “Death, be not proud” by John Donne and “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, discusses the concept of death in various forms of how it is presented, yet share the similarities of the inevitable of death itself. Donne presents death as an opposable force against those who face it as well to disagree against Death himself, as if he was a person. However, Shelley presents death through a lifeless statue, Ozymandias, and the perspectives of the travellers who come across it. Through these two pieces, the destruction is consistent despite their different perceptions of the event.
Throughout the two poems, Donne and Shelley contrasts in how death is perceived as if it was an animate or inanimate object. In Donne’s text, the speaker