And search the depth of its fair eyes385
For long departed memories!
And so I lived till that sweet load
Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed
The stream of years, and on it bore
Two shapes of gladness to my sight;390
Two other babes, delightful more
In my lost soul's abandoned night,
Than their own country ships may be
Sailing towards wrecked mariners,
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.395
For each, as it came, brought soothing tears,
And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
Sucking the sullen milk away
About my frozen heart, did play,
And weaned it, oh how painfully!—400
As they themselves were weaned each one
From that sweet food,—even from the thirst
Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
Strange inmate of a living breast!
Which all that I had undergone[1]405
Of grief and shame, since she, who first
The gates of that dark refuge closed,
Came to my sight, and almost burst
The seal of that Lethean spring;
But these fair shadows interposed:410
- ↑ There is probably either corruption in the line "which all that I had undergone," or a hiatus after "The seal of that Lethean spring." If the latter, then the incompleted sense is that each child, as it came, weaned Rosalind from the thirst of death,—that the first child not only closed the gate through which the mother looked towards "that dark refuge," but also almost burst the seal of the fountain of forgetfulness,—that then came fresh grief and shame, reimposing (but this is where the sense is incomplete) the thirst of death, to slake which "these fair shadows" (the remembered other children) interposed. It is conceivable, however, that there is neither corruption nor hiatus, but just that simple measure of laxity which Shelley allowed himself in this, perhaps the laxest of his mature poems in regard to diction and metre. If that be so, then he uses the word interposed in a strained and transitive sense; and the meaning would be "all that I had
