The old man is “stately and beautiful.” His very looks are sufficient to heal: “And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.” Shelley recalled, or imagined, the joy of being embraced by this “divine old man” when he wrote of the Hermit’s care for the sick Laon.
He did enfold
His giant arms around me to uphold
My wretched frame.
* * * * *
And two stanzas later:
the pillow
For my light head was hollowed in his lap
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap....
Then again in the second stanza of the fourth canto:
When the old man his boat had anchoréd
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few but kindly words he said,
And bore me through the tower adown a stair
There is evident in these quotations a certain desire to be caressed by this grand old rebel, and when we remember that Shelley had very little sympathy from either his Father or his Mother, this desire seems not unnatural; he demanded of Dr. Lind some of the physical love and tenderness which his parents had withheld. It would be a great mistake to imagine that, because the poet, with his unrivalled command over language and his tendency to express abstract emotion, normally seems to dwell in ethereal regions, Shelley the man was not often acutely susceptible to the cravings for contact with the beloved. On the contrary, numerous passages express this yearning; only, as they are written with consummate art, and not put in narrative but in lyric form, most people seem to fail to realise their meaning.
What are kisses, whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
In one caress?
The other romance of Shelley’s early boyhood concerned a schoolboy friend at Sion House. Apparently the two boys were both of about the same age, eleven or twelve years. The episode is recorded in a fragmentary essay on the subject of Friendship, written shortly before Shelley’s death, and given in Hogg’s Life.
“The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of human feeling seemed to have been from his birth genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manner inexpressibly attractive.... The tones of his voice were so soft and winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole playhours up and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in youthful talk.... I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful. Every night, when we parted to go to bed, we kissed each other like children—as we still were!”