Giant Despair

“ Greatheart, ‘I have a commandment to resist sin, to overcome evil, to fight the good fight of faith; and I pray, with whom should I fight this good fight, if not with Giant Despair?’
“Now Giant Despair, because he was a giant, thought no man could overcome him; and again thought he, ‘Since heretofore I have made a conquest of angels, shall Greatheart make me afraid?’ So he harnessed himself and went out. Then they fought for their lives, and Giant Despair was brought to the ground, but was loth to die. He struggled hard, and had, as they say, as many lives as a cat ”

“ Diffidence said to Giant Despair: I fear much that these men live on in hopes to pick the lock of the cell and get free.
Dost thou say so, my dear? quoth Giant Despair to his wife; then at sun rise I will search them.
Now, on that night, as Christian and Hopeful lay in the den, they fell on their knees to pray, and knelt till the day broke; when Christian gave a start, and said: Fool that I am thus to lie in this dark den when I might walk at large! I have a key in my pouch, the name of which is Promise, that, I feel sure, will turn the lock of all the doors in Doubting Castle. ”

“ The condition of Hopeful and Christian put by Giant Despair into "a very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking to their spirits," and beaten with stripes, and made to feel that the bitterness of death was as nothing to the bitterness of life, illustrates in allegory the state of man for countless centuries. ”

“ On the other hand, when Great-Heart allows Giant Despair to rise after his fall, showing his chivalry in refusing to take advantage of the fallen giant, we remember the incident of Sir Guy and Colebrand in the Seven Champions. ”

“ The struggles, for instance, of the gallant few against the crying and mighty wrong of human slavery would have in earlier times been handed down to posterity as a contest with an evil giant; and in the allegories of the Middle Ages we meet, in the same way, with Giant Pope, Giant Pagan, and Giant Despair. ”

“ There is blood and wounds all over your back. That is where the old giant beat you, isn't it? How did you escape?"
"Blessed be Immanuel forever! For a long time old Despair has had me in his dungeon. I've been nearly killed. Giant Discourager encountered me first and got me off into that ravine over there toward the castle. Then old Despair caught me and put me in his dungeon. He beat me regularly morning, noon, and night. He has killed a number of pilgrims. He killed one while I was there; and there is a large heap of the bones of other poor pilgrims out of whom he drove the spark of hope. ”

“ When you have just lost a beloved there is a wretched moment, after the brutal shock, when you begin to understand that all is over, and blank despair surrounds you and looms like a giant. ”

“ And, surely, it did come to me with a fierce impatience of sorrow, that those people did be without spirit of courage; else had they turned them upon the giants, and slain them with their hands, even if that all had died to compass that slaying; for, truly, they should all die anywise by the giant-men; and they had died then with somewhat to comfort their hate.
Yet, as I do know, the Peoples of the Lesser Redoubt had long been born of parents that were starved of the Earth-Current through an hundred-thousand years and more, and because of this thing, they did surely lack somewhat in all ways. ”

“ Hot sun, torment of burning feet on the cruel, white, and endless roads, the odour and sight and sound of death and wounds, pressure of pressing men, and love of life and the horrid loneliness of fear—all that was Giant Circumstance; but he could not extinguish the souls of men made in the image of God for suffering and endurance and triumph. ”

“ By one dread moment of the earthquake's might!
A thousand pangs thy bosom may have borne,
In silent fortitude or haughty scorn,
Till comes the one, the master-anguish, sent
To break the mighty heart that ne'er was bent.
Oh! what is nature's strength? The vacant eye,
By mind deserted, hath a dread reply!
The wild delirious laughter of despair,
The mirth of frenzy—seek an answer there!
Turn not away, though pity's cheek grow pale,
Close not thine ear against their awful tale. ”

“ Cursed be the air that shall breathe on thee! Cursed the sleep that shall refresh thee! Cursed every human step that shall come to sooth thy misery! Down, into the lowest vault beneath my house! There whine, and cry aloud! (pausing with inward horror.) Be thy life painful as the tortures of the writhing worm— agonizing as the stubborn conflict between existence and annihilation. This curse lie on thee till Gianettino shall have heaved forth his dying breath. If he escape his punishment, then mayest thou drag thy load of misery throughout the endless circle of eternity! ”

“ I passed two consecutive days and nights on board the Esmerelda, between fire and inundation; and if I were to extract the quintessence of the agonies experienced upon these three occasions it could never equal the intense torture I suffer at the Poste-Restante. Three seals broken, three letters opened, three overwhelming disappointments! Nothing! nothing! nothing! Oh miserable synonym of despair! Oh cruel type of death! Why do you appear before me each day as if to warn my foolish heart that all hope is dead! Then how dreary and empty to me is this cold, unfeeling world we move in! ”

“ Prone in the dust lies the demon Despair, still shouting his shibboleth
To the treacherous Amazon dark-browed Fate, and her grisly comrade, Death.
To have lived! To have felt in my veins the surge of the rich, red tide of life,
The quickening stir of the strong man's heart that thrills to the sound of strife ”

“ Not a moment's pause to the fury, not a moment's silence to the roar;—forward to the last glimpse of the sun—the curse of labour, and the soul of unutterable strength, shall be upon those waters! The demon, tormented to an eternity, filling his dread dwelling-place with the unresting and unearthly voice of his rage and despair, is the only type meet for the spirit of the cataract. ”

“ How can we describe the terrible agony to which they are a prey who, like Madame de Fermont, expect a letter which brings them either hope or despair? The burning, fevered excitement of the player whose last pieces of gold are hazarded on a card, and who, breathless, with inflamed eye, awaits for a decisive cast which brings his ruin or his fortune,—this emotion, violent as it is, may perhaps give some idea of the painful anguish of which we speak. In a second the soul is elevated to the most radiant hope or relapses into the most mortal discouragement. ”

“ Amid shouts of victory and cries of despair—in frantic rejoicing and passionate sorrow—a pall of black smoke, streaked by the fiery flashings of exploding fortresses, descended upon the stage, on which had been depicted so many varied traits of human misery and of human greatness, such high endurance and calm courage, such littleness and weakness—across which had stalked characters which history may hereafter develope as largely as the struggle in which they were engaged, and swell to gigantic proportions, or which she may dwarf into pettiest dimensions, as unworthy of the parts they played. ”

“ Heavy and coarse beasts trampled upon me with the dull steps of terribly heavy feet; cold tusks of bloody mouths tore my tender body—and in my powerless sorrow I bit the sand, I swallowed the dust of the ground—I was dying of despair. Crushed, I was dying every day. Every day I was dying of despair. ”

“ These dreams, in which we feel ourselves paralysed, are a [237] positive torture; the ground gives way under us and we are precipitated into an abyss; we fall while being pursued and cannot get up again; we find ourselves stretched out in the middle of the street and hear the approaching roll of wheels that will crush us, or see a horse gallop up to trample us with its hoofs. We cannot even scream, hands and feet try in vain to move, the oppression and despair increase until the nightmare passes and we awake with beating heart and laboured breath. ”

“ As they looked she fell, and lay with upturned face and staring eyes, in whose glassy depths the ill-fated ones who watched her could see mirrored their own impending doom.
It was an awful moment. A groan, in which was concentrated the despair of seven miserable souls, rose from that petrified band; then, man by man, they separated and fell back, showing on each weak or wicked face the particular passion which had driven them into crime and made them the victims of this wholesale revenge. There had been some sort of bond between them till the vision of death rose before each shrinking soul. ”

“ But, when hope yet struggles with despair, or when the calamity abruptly announces itself, then is the true contention, the tempest and uproar of the soul too vast to be endured.
This sentiment of ineffable wretchedness I experienced, when I stooped down over the body of the imaginary Louisa, and when I hastened to obtain the certainty which was of all things most terrible to me. The termination of such a moment of horror is scarcely less memorable than its intrinsic greatness. In an instant the soul recovers its balance, and the thought is as if it has never been. ”

“ The roar and thunder of Their passage was resumed. It seemed the mountains reeled.
“They are passing,” sang the voice that was beside him and within him too, “but They have known you, and your offering is accepted. When They come close upon the world there is ever wreckage and disaster in the affairs of men. They bring disorder and confusion into the mind, a confusion that seems final, a disorder that seems to threaten death. For there is tumult in Their Presence, and apparent chaos that seems the abandonment of order. Out of this vast ruin, then, there issues life in new design. ”

“ This was the temptation of Despair; and the young man fought it doggedly. Like some grave shadow he flitted by those halls, pleading, arguing, half angrily demanding admittance, until there came the final No; until men hustled the disturber away, marked him as foolish, unreasonable, and injudicious; a vain rebel against God's law. And then from that Vision Splendid all the glory faded slowly away, and left an earth gray and stern rolling on beneath a dark despair. ”

“ I felt the agony that was in it, the passionate striving, the awful struggle to escape. The semi-darkness held beseeching faces that fought to press themselves upon my vision, yearning yet hopeless eyes, lips scorched and dry, mouths that opened to implore but found no craved delivery in actual words, and a fury of misery and hate that made the life in me stop dead, frozen by the horror of vain pity. ”

“ With the unyielding courage of despair,
Holding the red scourge at bay.
And, reeling in uttermost weariness,
Realizing their doom is sealed,
They can but die in the unequal strife,
But must not—no, must not yield! ”

“ To voice the cry of Labor he must first endure its agony; to speak the protest of the Doomed he must first endure the doom. Led by Destiny, he went the weary way of toil and tragedy, the way along which the dumb millions march in pain to their Golgotha. Each footfall tore his heartstrings; each fallen human wreck woke in his soul a yearning to speak their curse to the driving Power he could not see. Each human cry sank into his heart, each tortured curse he nourished as his own. ”

“ It may be relied on, that such disasters exceed in measure of sorrow almost any kind of historical distress, except those of plague or famine. No other accident but these last ever introduced such coldness to the poor man’s hearth, such despair to his heart, or made him regret with so bitter a pang that he had others to care for besides himself. ”

“ Engulfed in a common ruin lay all fragments of desire; the search for reward, the dread of punishment—all petty figments of the imagination were powerful now no more. The fall of reason crushed every human hope and dulled the edge of every human fear. ”

“ The run pierced further than to that middle tragedy—pierced to a tragedy more intimate and dreadful—pierced through into the adjoining cell, where lay his child, his little love, perishing of cold and hunger. He read it all in an instant—the disastrous consequences of his own disaster. And he could not comfort or intervene while this, his pretty swan, was singing himself to death hard by.
Pity him in that minute. I think, poor wretch, his state was near the worse—so strong, and yet so helpless. He shrieked, he struck himself, he blasphemed. Monstrous? ”

“ Every one present in the great church shed tears of heartfelt sorrow, pitying the great banker, quite humanly; but he himself did not weep, he sat limply with eyes on the floor, in a daze of internal emotion; but when the door of the vault closed on his dead a final terrible cry burst from him, the cry of one who realizes to the last and to the full the emptiness, the futility of a life without love, an old age without hope. ”

“ The ancient story of failure, ill-luck, undeserved disaster, went down the wind, disconnected syllables flying past Ralph’s ears with a queer alternation of loudness and faintness as if, at certain moments, the man’s memory of his wrongs revived and then flagged, dying down at last into a grumble of resignation, which seemed to represent a final lapse into the accustomed despair. ”

“ You know, all men who have ever suffered much, know the strange anomalies of despair—the quiet of our veriest anguish. Deceived by my bearing, I learned, by degrees, from my attendants, that Gertrude had some weeks since betrayed sudden symptoms of insanity ”