In act 4, scene 7, the rescued Lear is sleeping under the care of doctors when he is brought in and awakes to see Cordelia. In these lines, Lear shows that he thinks both he and Cordelia are dead. He believes has been taken out of his grave and hellfire to see her in heaven.
We know this because he says to Cordelia that she is a "soul in bliss," while he is
bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
In other words, he is in hell.When Cordelia asks him if he recognizes her, he says he knows she is a spirit and asks, "Where did you die?"It is only gradually that he realizes they are both still alive.What is most important is that his words acknowledge her innocence and his own guilt. He conveys that he knows he was wrong to cast her out as an unfaithful child. His guilt, even though he is not really in hell, nevertheless tortures him as if he were on a wheel of fire. Likewise, his tears of regret over his treatment of her feel like molten lead on his cheeks: these images show he burns with anguish and remorse.
When Lear wakes up and finds himself in his daughter Cordelia's tender care, he uses one of Shakespeare's most brilliant metaphors:
You do me wrong to take me out o' the' grave.Thou are a soul in bliss; but I am boundUpon a wheel of fire, that mine own tearsDo scald like molten lead.
Lear is imagining he is in hell, and he is experiencing his hallucination so vividly that he can describe one of the devices the demons use to torture the damned.
The alliteration of "L" sounds is unusual, if not unprecedented, but most effective for enhancing the image conveyed.
mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
The "L" sounds in "scald," "like," "molten," and "lead" make the words seem to ooze out slowly like drops of molten lead. "Like molten lead" is a simile, but it is enclosed within a metaphor. We visualize a man on a fiery wheel being roasted throughout eternity and being scalded drop by drop with his own tears.
A simile within a metaphor. Shakespeare does the opposite in Macbeth when he has Lady Macbeth tell her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it": a metaphor within a simile, a real serpent hiding beneath an imaginary flower.
A parallel thought often quoted from the Oresteia of Aeschylus is
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
https://www.owleyes.org/text/king-lear/read/act-iv-scene-i
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