Agony

“ A father’s curse is heavy; shall I paint this agonizing suffering to you, child! I can do so; for I have felt it. I have it now. I once had a daughter.’
‘Oh, sir, do not name her!’ I cried, with a feeling of agony, too powerful for utterance.
‘Oh, how I doted on that daughter,’ he continued, and his countenance betrayed the terrible mental agony he was enduring. ‘How I adored her, words cannot tell; thoughts cannot measure! Yet—she sacrificed me to a villain,—her ingratitude has bleached this head,—her wickedness has broken this heart, and now my detestation is upon her! ”

“ There is the stretch of human suffering to the utmost endurance, severe bodily pain brought on by strong mental agony, the frightful, obstinate laugh of madness,—yet all so unforced and natural, that those who never were witness to madness in real life, think they see nothing but what is familiar to them in this face. Here are no tricks of distortion, nothing but the natural face of agony. ”

“ What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? Sometimes in the midst of tears, or worse, amidst the convulsive gaspings of despair, we reproach ourselves for influencing the eternal fates by our gloomy anticipations: then, if a smile wreathe the mourner’s quivering lip, it is arrested by a throb of agony. ”

“ He had come out from the heart of the more terrible pain—No longer had he to lie, knowing that soon, after another minute's peace, agony would rise before him like a creature with a wet pale malignant face, and then after looking upon him for a moment, would bend down and, with its horrible damp fingers, would twist and turn his bones one against another until the supreme moment came when nothing mattered and no agony, however bad, could touch his indifferent soul. ”

“ One wild moment of yelling agony,—one flash of a fierce and fiery light, that seemed to envelope and wither me soul and body,—one sound, that swept through my ears and brain like the last trumpet, as it will thrill on the senses of those who slept in guilt, and awake in despair,—one such moment, that condenses and crowds all imaginable sufferings in one brief and intense pang, and appears exhausted itself by the blow it has struck,—one such moment I remember, and no more. ”

“ How will your delicate frame bear the agony when thrown alive into the burning pile? Then, when the hot fire slowly seizes on each writhing limb, and every scorched nerve overwhelms your soul with agonising torments, then—when too late, you will repent your refusal of my proffered mercy. ”

“ My paradise was in the past, but the avenging angel guarded the closed gates with his flaming sword. My present was the gulf of black despair; my future was a blank, or worse. Oh, agony of agonies!—how have I contrived to endure so much, and yet live?
Death! The good alone can contemplate death with composure. Guilt is a dreadful coward. The bad dare not die. ”

“ But, poor soul! even as he insists, the agony within rises, breaks up, overwhelms the picture. He lives again through the jars and frets of those few burning days, the growing mistrust of them, the sense of jealous terror and insecurity—and then through the anguish of desertion and loss. ”

“ That of their care thou hast no stronger proof?
Perhaps they do not like to hear or see
Thy last deep groan, thy dying agony!
The grass upspurn’d,
Thine eye upturn’d,
Bespeak its weight to heedless passers by!
That hoarse deep sigh, the sad effect of sin,
Proclaims the depth of agony within!
On man and beast,
Greatest and least,
Grim Death doth feed, and glad his victim win! ”

“ Have I not prayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensation of a listening Power, a loving Presence, assuaged my pain. Yet, human or brute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the grasp of a mortal agony. ”

“ When fury and anger sweep us in their red flame, and gentle, familiar aspects of nature take on the hue of blood, we clench our fists until the nails are driven deep into the flesh. In the first shock of the agony of bereavement, or during those cruel dragging hours when we are adjusting ourselves to living with our hearts torn asunder, we clasp our hands in frenzy. ”

“ In life, you turned from him—in death, he turns from you. Fall, fall, fall, to rise again in hopeless misery, and sink again in lonely agony forever!" All space took up the last four words of my terrible sentence, and myriads of voices, some sweet and sad, some with wicked, vindictive glee, echoed and re-echoed like a refrain, "In lonely agony forever!" ”

“ Each trembled for himself, or for those dear to him; every countenance was stamped with an expression of feverish astonishment and dread. People walked with rapid steps, as if they would escape from the fate which threatened them; besides, they were in haste to return to their homes, for often they left life, health, happiness, and, two hours later, they found agony, death, and despair. ”

“ Her head, of the pure classical mould, is bent forward, as if weighed down by the shock, and there is a heavy drooping in the mouth and eyelids, that denotes a sudden and sickening agony. It is not a violent, passionate grief, but a deep and almost paralyzing emotion—a shock from which the soul will finally rebound, strengthened to make the sacrifice. ”

“ It means agony to him and all that love him: what maimer of agony God wot, and in His hand is the ell-wand to measure, and the balances to weigh. Lord! Thou wilt not blunder to give an inch too much, nor wilt Thou for all our greeting weigh one grain too little. Thou wilt not let us miss the right way, for the rough stones and the steep mountain-side. ”

“ Nothing can ever cure me, no dream of my mind can ever efface the dream of my heart.—All has been in vain; this anguish is killing me. I feel that my hurt is mortal, my heart pains me as if some one were actually crushing it, were tearing it to pieces. My agony of mind is so great that it has become a physical torment—atrocious, unbearable. ”

“ The creeping flames soon restored her to consciousness through the agony which they inflicted upon her, and she shrieked pitifully for the help that none would give her, until death at last put an end to her sufferings. ”

“ The gods only know what agony of mind is mine. The torture of thinking of the pure, sweet girl in the power of those wretches above us—to imagine her shrinking in their foul, pitiless hands—oh!’ The young man shook his clenched fists and then buried his face in his hands. ”

“ There can be no more solid comfort.
4. Consider the mortal agony which our Saviour suffered in his soul, during the prayer of this night. We may judge of the pains and anguish of his soul, by the wonderful effect they produced in his body, by casting him into that prodigious sweat of blood to such a degree, as to imbue the very ground on which he lay prostrate. Sweet Jesus, who ever heard of such an agony as this? But what thinkest thou, my soul, was the true cause of all this anguish, and of this bitter agony of thy Saviour? ”

“ There is heaven overhead, pretending to be calming and benignant, and giving no help, while I am thinking in agony what can be done to save from any touch of shame or deeper sorrow that noble daughter. ”

“ When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm. ”

“ Perhaps a reason may be found in the sacredness of pity. Evil and agony are the manure from which spring some of the whitest lilies that have ever bloomed beneath that enigmatic blue which roofs the terror and the triumph of the world. ”

“ Who will understand my horrible agony? Who will understand the emotion of a man sound in mind, wide-awake, full of sense, who looks in horror at the disappearance of a little water while he was asleep, through the glass of a water-bottle! ”

“ Pain, even to agony, were better than thus to brave Omnipotence—to rush forward uncalled into that state of which no certain end is known: to snatch destiny into our own power, and draw upon ourselves, 86 in one instant of time, terrors and punishments above the boundless apprehension even of an evil imagination to conceive. ”

“ But through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmixed, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's Paradise. ”

“ L_____ gone, without a word, without a line, my short dream all shattered and shimmering about me! and a cold, black, unfathomable abyss before me,--never shall I forget the first petrifying yet bewildering agony--the severing, as it were, of body and soul--that I felt, and which I am certain must be what one feels when the real severing of them by death comes. ”

“ A few in fancy feel ill, imagine doctor and nurse, go through the last agony, imagine others standing about weeping and praising them, or perhaps picture themselves as the bystanders and see the imaginary death of a friend and try to weep. ”

“ May all the members of my body be tortured with inconceivable agony, and all the powers of my soul tormented with horror and despair, inexpressible and eternal! Let my dwelling be in the blackness of darkness, and my companions accursed men and accursed devils! ”

“ I was all physical feeling,—all intense corporeal agony, and God only knows, and man only can feel, how that agony can absorb and annihilate all other feeling within us,—how we could, in such a moment, feed on a parent, to gnaw out our passage into life and liberty, as sufferers in a wreck have been known to gnaw their own flesh, for the support of that existence which the unnatural morsel was diminishing at every agonizing bite. ”

“ Then turning from the sight, he rushed away, not caring whither, sobbing such sobs as the lost souls in hell may sob in their despair—a dreadful sobbing, that told of a hopeless agony too intense to be endured for long by weak human flesh. ”

“ Sitting there in the dark and the cold, he grew barely conscious of his own pain. This is Nature’s mercy. When the wound is beyond bearing she draws away the sufferer’s consciousness, and an extremity of agony brings its own relief, if only for a little while. ”

“ In this agony they sigh, groan, utter indistinct sounds, and remain in the jaws of death, till, by the utmost efforts of nature, or some external assistance, they escape out of that dreadful torpid state. ”

“ As of a hungry agonized spirit standing outside its wretched body, and watching its feeble movements, conscious of their futility, conscious of being chained to the miserable thing, and only knowing rebellion and agony. ”

“ Sometimes the agony is prolonged, as they do not even learn that; and who can tell the bitterness as the weary hours of the night pass away and the cold gray of morn reappears, as the watchful ear tries to fancy in every sound of the passing footstep the return of one never to come home more? ”

“ He stalks his lonely room with an agony which only the young heart knows in its first horrible awakening to remorse—when it looks despair full in the face, and feels its hideous incantations tempting him to suicide. ”

“ It is absolutely impossible to give even a faint idea of the horror, the agony, the heart-rending terror that harrowed up his soul, whenever the thought of death flashed across his mind. He received me with phrensied ardour, in which hope and fear were strongly depicted. ”

“ What right has an infinite God to add to the sum of human agony? Suppose I knew that I could change that piece of furniture into a living, sentient human being, and I knew that that being would suffer untold agony forever. ”

“ There is an undercurrent of agony in the whole place. The trace of it is on every face—the agony of [Pg 172] danger, of having seen good men and great friends die or suffer, of being away from home, of seeing nothing ahead, of sweating and working under hot suns or under stars that mock. Let there be a distinct understanding that the agony is not misery. The strong man bears his agony without misery; and those at Anzac are strong. ”

“ Why do they prolong the agony? Because they wish to cling to suffering? No, because long ago they wandered far from the harmonious happy state they resided in, and are now subconsciously trying to return. ”

“ But pain of body was then, and for many moments after, lost in agony of mind, which could he conceived only by him who, like the young soldier, has been doomed, once in his life, to see a tender female, the nearest and dearest object of his affections, in the hands of enemies, the most heartless, merciless, and brutal of all the races of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The agony of the girl touched me to the heart. I have seen much of the evil side of life; but all the scenes of sin and sorrow have made me unable to turn a deaf ear to the cry of suffering, agonizing humanity. ”

“ Many are throwing up their arms in agony; some appear to be paralysed: unable to move, they await their coming doom; and in other parts are beautiful heads, giving utterance to cries of desperation, and cast backwards in the horrors of hopeless anguish. ”

“ And on all the full mysterious meaning of that agony and bloody sweat it would be impossible now to dwell, but may we not for a short time dwell with profit—may not every one whose heart—being free from the fever of passion, and unfretted by the pettiness of pride—is calm and meek and reverent enough to listen to the messages of God, even be they spoken by the feeblest of human lips,—may we not all, I say, learn something from this fragment of that thrilling story that—"being in an agony, He prayed"? ”