Page:Rosalind and Helen (Shelley, Forman).djvu/72

70
 * Sudden, thy shadow fell on me:

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
 * To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
 * With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
 * Of studious zeal or love's delight
 * Outwatched with me the envious night—

They know that never joy illumed my brow,
 * Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
 * This world from its dark slavery,
 * That thou—O awful ,

Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. There can be but little doubt that these two stanzas (5 and 6) have reference to the same awakening of Shelley's spirit to its sublime mission, referred to in another passage of like autobiographic value, namely stanzas 3, 4, and 5 of the Dedication to Leon and Cythna (pp. 102 and 103). In a note on those stanzas the question whether the awakening was at Eton or at Brentford is referred to; and whichever be the correct version as to period and locality in that case is also correct as to this. The passage in Sir John Rennie's Autobiography alluded to there seems to me to correspond still more strikingly with these two stanzas of the Hymn than with the version of the same spiritual situation in the Dedication; and I have therefore reserved the following extract from the Autobiography as more ﬁtting to be given here than there:—"During the time that I was there the most remarkable scholar was the celebrated poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was then about twelve or thirteen (as far as I can remember), and even at that early age exhibited considerable poetical talent, accompanied by a violent and extremely excitable temper, which manifested itself in all kinds of eccentricities. ...His imagination was always roving upon something romantic and extraordinary, such as spirits, fairies, ﬁghting, volcanoes, &c., and he not unfrequently astonished his schoolfellows by blowing up the boundary palings of the playground with gunpowder, also the lid of his desk in the middle of schooltime, to the great surprise of Dr. Greenlaw himself and the whole school. In fact, at times he was considered to be almost upon the borders of insanity; yet with all this, when treated with kindness, he was very amiable, noble, high-spirited, and generous; he used to write verse, English and Latin, with considerable facility, and attained a high position in the school before he left for Eton where I understand, he was equally, if not