Analysis of Sonnet : On Launching Some Bottles Filled With Knowledge Into The Bristol Channel

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)



Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze
Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;
Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar
Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;
And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop
From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,
Sure she will breathe around your emerald group
The fairest breezes of her West that blow.
Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul
Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight,
Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,
Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole,
And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst
To see their night of ignorance dispersed.


Scheme ABBACDCEFGHFII
Poetic Form
Metre 101100100101 0101111111 1111010101 101100101 01110010111 110101011 1111011101 0101010111 1111111101 1111011111 010110100111 01110011111 01011100101 1111110001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 633
Words 110
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 513
Words per stanza (avg) 108
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 02, 2023

33 sec read
60

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. more…

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    Which poetic form consists of fourteen lines, typically written in iambic pentameter and follows a specific rhyme scheme?
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