Explore "Sonnet: to a Balloon Laden with Knowledge" by Percy Bysshe Shelley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even / Silently takest thine aethereal way, / And with surpassing glory dimm'st each ray / Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,- / Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou / Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom, / Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow / A watch-light by the patriot's lonely tomb; / A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor; / A spark, though gleaming on the hovel's hearth, / Which through the tyrant's gilded domes shall roar; / A beacon in the darkness of the Earth; / A sun which, o'er the renovated scene, / Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.