Sonnet: on Launching some Bottles Filled with Kn
The speaker addresses bottles containing knowledge as vessels of heavenly medicine, praying they survive the sea's roar and are carried by Liberty's breeze to a free soul. This recipient will ignite the flame of truth on Earth, dispersing tyranny's ignorance until tyrants burst with envy.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Sonnet, Political Poetry · 159 words
First lines
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.
What this Textopian page supports
Sonnet: on Launching some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Sonnet, Political Poetry
- Length: 159 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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- Work identity for Sonnet: on Launching some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Genres
- Sonnet — Fourteen rhymed lines move from a wish for the vessels' safe passage to a vision of ignorance dispersed.
- Political Poetry — The speaker invokes Liberty to guide the vessels to a freeborn soul and envisions a worldwide light that disperses ignorance and provokes tyrants' envy.
Tags
sonnet · romanticism · political poetry · liberty · tyranny · maritime imagery · revolutionary thought