Whilst[1] animal life many long years
Had rescued from a chasm of tears;
And when I woke, I wept to find1210
That the same lady, bright and wise,
With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
The mother of my Lionel,
Had tended me in my distress,
And died some months before. Nor less1215
Wonder, but far more peace and joy
Brought in that hour my lovely boy;
For through that trance my soul had well
The impress of thy being kept;
And if I waked, or if I slept,1220
No doubt, though memory faithless be,
Thy image ever dwelt on me;
And thus, O Lionel, like thee
Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange
I knew not of so great a change,1225
As that which gave him birth, who now
Is all the solace of my woe.
That Lionel great wealth had left
By will to me, and that of all
The ready lies of law bereft,1230
- ↑ This is certainly another instance of misprinting involving an "error in the sense"; but there are so many possible ways of reconstructing the two faulty lines on an equally Shelley-like pattern, that I do not venture to disturb the text at all. I have no doubt that Whilst in line 1208 and Had in line 1209 are both wrong, and that the sense intended by Shelley would be conveyed by
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
Which animal life many long years
Rescued from a chasm of tears;the rescue of the "animal life" being evidently subsequent to the time of hallucination, and contemporary with the "dead sleep",—because if, admitting had to be right, we make the rescue from the "chasm of tears" contemporary with the hallucination, we are met by the statement that the imaginary land of Helen's madness was "drear hell" to her, which is very much like not being rescued from a "chasm of tears." I find the whole line,
Whilst animal life many long years,
bafflingly unlike Shelley; and it does not strike me as much more characteristic when we reduce it to sense by substituting Which for Whilst.
