Skip to content

Sonnet. on Launching Some Bottles Filled With Knowledge into the Bristol Channel

Lines:14Movement:Romanticism
Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breezeAuspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roarOf the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoopFrom yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,Sure she will breathe around your emerald groupThe fairest breezes of her West that blow.Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soulWhose 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 burstTo see their night of ignorance dispersed.