An Analysis of Shelley’s “Sonnet: On Launching Some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol River”

Sonnet: On Launching Some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol River

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

An Analysis of  Shelley’s “Sonnet: On Launching Some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol River”

            Shelley’s “Sonnet: On Launching Some Bottles Filled with Knowledge into the Bristol River”, explores the issue of  knowledge being used as a tool to facilitate empowerment. The poet presents the liberating effect which results from accumulating knowledge.

            The metaphorical opening line of the poetic work, “vessels of  Heavenly medicine” (1), masterfully compares the possession of  knowledge with spiritual enlightenment and divine insight. The persona purports that being educated is as therapeutic as the divine healing of  both mind and body. Liberation from ignorance through the gain of  knowledge is presented as the evocation of rejuvenation and restoration which is as medicinal as pills which free the body from the chains of  illness.

            Shelley further investigates the heavenly rapture of  knowledge by personifying “Liberty” (5). It is superbly portrayed as a meek, humble woman, who promotes the distribution of  knowledge; symbolized by “the emerald group” (7). The clear consequential relationship between the two entities mightily delineates the freedom and power that only knowledge and education can bestow.

            Furthermore, many words are coined in the sonnet to effectively exemplify the contradistinctive characteristics of  the oppressors and the oppressed in order  to justify and validate the empowerment through knowledge. The newly invented words, “freeborn” (9), “eye-beam” (10), and “heaven-born” (11), delineate the potential to grasp freedom, spiritual superiority and clarity of  mind respectively, while, the novel word, “tyrant-hearts” (13), superimposes the slavery to iniquity, moral degradation and evil-darkened minds of  the oppressors in Victorian society.

            The Victorian poet mixes the rhyme schemes of  the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets to address the need for and importance of knowledge in his own sonnet. The Petrarchan-like form of  the first and third quatrains powerfully renders the contrasting states of the knowledgeable and ignorant crowds with the symbols of the “dark green forms” (2) which are “stem[med]” (3) and the “suffering Earth” (11). On the other hand, the Shakespearean alternating rhymes in the second stanza mightily delineate the logical progression from the gain of  knowledge to liberty. The concluding couplet, in semblance of  Shakespearean tradition, superbly submits the final “dispers[ion]” (14) of both “ignorance” (14) and oppression, and challenges the reader by imposing that there is no alternative for the persona’s purported resolution.

            Using the strategic and masterful combination of lexical and syntactic poetic devices, sound devices and form, the poet expertly imposes the issue of  the empowerment of  an oppressed society by gaining knowledge. Shelley’s application of  traditional forms in an unconventional and novel manner powerfully crafts an ingenious delivery of  an ages-old problem and a simple solution for it.