In Percy Shelley’s poem Liberty, liberty is compared to a force of nature sweeping the globe, where “tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night” which will disappear in “the van of the morning light” (1824)
Found in: Posthumous Poems (1824)
In a collection of his posthumously published poems there is this little gem about Liberty which likens it to a force of nature sweeping the globe:
Literature & Music
LIBERTY.
The fiery mountains answer each other; Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone; The empestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round winter’s zone When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.
From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around, Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound Is bellowing underground.
But keener thy gaze than the lightning’s glare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanos; the sun’s bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp.
From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast; From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,— And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night In the van of the morning light.