The leg
In the poem "Ozymandias’’ the central symbol is the leg upon which the narrator stumbles upon while in the desert. The leg was once part of a great statue of the pharaoh named Ozymandias and is personified here, having the ability to talk. The leg becomes a symbol in the second part of the poem, when the narrator mentions that the leg is everything that remains from the legacy of a once mighty pharaoh. Thus, the leg is used here as a symbol to suggest the passing of time and also how fame can come and go in a moment.
Power corrupts
One of the common motifs in the poem "Prothalamion’’ is the idea that power will almost inevitably corrupt the person who ends up in a position where he can influence the lives of others. Even when a person has the purest intentions, they will eventually abandon them in favor of more selfish reasons. This idea appears in the first stanza of the poem and is mentioned in every other stanza until the end of the poem.
The slippers
The poem "The Curate to his Slippers’’ tells the story of a working man returning home one evening, eager to take off his shoes and put on comfortable slippers. Both type of shoes, the boots and the slippers are used here as symbols, each standing for something different. The boots are used as a symbol for the hard work a man has to do in order to sustain himself and his family while the slippers represent the enjoyable activities. Still, as the narrator admits at the end of the poem, while the slippers are comfortable, they have no real value and as such should not replace the working boots.
Cigar
In the poem entitled "Young England’’ the narrator ends the poem every time with the line "And a light cigar’’. The object in question brings the narrator comfort, helping him forget about the ways in which his life was turned upside down as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Because of this, the cigar is used here as a symbol to suggest the traditional, happy and carefree type of life the narrator had before the world was changed completely by the new inventions.
The comfortable room
In the poem "Love and Liberty’’, the most important symbol which is mentioned is the room the bird left behind when it decided to run away. Once the bird was free, it started to miss the quiet and warm room left behind, and wished it could return to it once more. The room left by the bird represents in this case the institution of marriage the bird, or the woman, wanted to escape from and from which it could never return back to.
