Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous birds, with those also that love thetwilight, flutterabout, amazed at what she means.

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

Then washed in the brightness of this vision, I saw how in its radiance would grow and be nourished and suddenly burst into terrible and splendid bloom the blood-red flower of revolution.

-Randall, Dudley
  Cities Burning,'Roses and Revolutions'.

   The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly: Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
Adonais, stanza 52.