In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the
passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes,
besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love,
which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.
At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had
said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be
permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared
that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to
resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything,
and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas
addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under
the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to
preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not
written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the
spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and
was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable
emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this
effusion is introduced in "Rosalind and Helen". When afterwards this
child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the English burying-ground in
that city: 'This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the
yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal
by love, as his memory is by death.
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