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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 02, 2023

33 sec read
60

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBACDCEFGHFII
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 633
Words 110
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

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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