Dénouement

“ When the denouement comes, indeed—when the wife flees or commits suicide—when bosom friends part, or brothers speak no more—we may know that there has been the conflict of character or the clash of temperaments which go to make the tragedies of life. ”

“ Avoiding every digression, the action should go forward rapidly, in order not to weary the patience and dissipate the interest of the spectator. The dénouement should not be dependent upon some foreign element introduced at the last moment, but should spring naturally from the antecedent action.
In addition to the five principal parts just indicated—introduction, rise or tying of the knot, climax, fall or untying of the knot, and dénouement—there are three other elements or factors that need to be pointed out. ”

“ She did not, however, prolong a situation so critical, but at once, and with an impetuosity that bespoke her intense anxiety, burst out into the story of her actual calamities. Never was there a narrative more difficult to follow; broken at one moment by bursts of sorrow, heart-rending regrets, or scarce less poignant expressions of a resignation that savored of despair. ”

“ I called to mind the sorrow, the heaviness, the tears, and oppression of heart, which I experienced in that confinement. Every step produced some particular impression. A pilgrim in the Holy Land does not meet so many spots pregnant with tender recollections, and his soul is hardly moved with greater devotion. One incident will serve for illustration. I followed the course of a stream to a farm, formerly a delightful walk of mine, and paused at the spot, where, when boys, we used to amuse ourselves making ducks and drakes upon the water. ”

“ Expiation will never end while I have breath to pray—not until the same grave that holds my victims covers me. You can not understand, because you know no more about love than the rubric! If you had ever felt your wife's lips on yours, or the clasp of your child's arms, and heard his glad, tender cry of 'father!'—you would realize that no expiation could be sufficient, if your hand had smitten them to ruin. ”

“ I will say nothing of renunciation; harder for me has been the feeling of abandonment, and the longing for human society has often tormented me unspeakably. Only the thought that renunciation is my expiation has comforted me. I have often gone out into the valleys, where people live in pleasant companionship. I have refreshed myself with the knowledge of their peace of conscience and of their contentment, and I have then returned to my cave in the ever-lonely Felsenthal and to the silent cross upon the stony ground. ”

“ Constant and heart-felt resignation is a bulwark against every trial, and a foundation for solid peace, and joy transcendently pure. The whole state of a soul made perfect in love stands in that one petition, Thy will be done: and if we could but preserve that temper which these words describe, I know not what could hurt us. Suppose now when I first wake in a morning I should lift up my heart, “Lord I bless thee for this new day which thou hast given me. In this day I shall have fresh manifestations of thy will concerning me, either in comforts or in sufferings. ”

“ But coming out of the obliquity of the accustomed flow of house and street life, and standing as we stood on a bright November afternoon lately, in cells where the chained captive must often have sighed for death—thought returns, the imagination clears, and the wonderful panorama of the past rushes on and on before the excited mind in all the vivid hues of restless, changing, struggling, suffering human life. ”

“ A fast ebbing life, so crowded with the accumulated anxieties, disappointments, treacheries and sorrows of a tragic ministry, now moved swiftly towards its climax. The most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the new Dispensation was rapidly attaining its culmination. ”

“ As autumn approached, with faint notice on his part, his anger and resentment retreated, leaving in their wake a gentle stir of regret and remorse. Imperceptibly, he grew physically weary; a strange sensation of loneliness and isolation enveloped him. A species of timidity came upon him; he felt an unhappy remoteness from people, and began to edge away from life. ”

“ And so, reconvinced of its emptiness, he would to his ravings again.
Well, the tumultuous time passed, and was succeeded in due course by a sad and settled resignation. The habit of sorrow comes, like other habits, to fit the more easily the longer it is worn. There was reached a day of half sweet, half melancholy reveries, when past joys began to assume an air of dim peacefulness, more of regret than of anguish. Old looks, old tones took on a mystic glamour, like happy things remembered from a dream. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You talk of "permanent views and future comfort"—not for me, for I am dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution destroyed. I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the continual anxiety I feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the fever that nightly devours me. ”

“ A whole atmosphere of consecrated suffering seems to float round these spots sacred to sorrow, the sorrow that humbly appeals, as it best knows how, to the love, wide enough to embrace and comfort all desolate, and yearning, and heavy-laden souls. ”

“ When the whole emotional and moral nature has thrown itself in a particular direction, and then an unwinding has taken place, the moment of completed renunciation has been said to be the dawn of some great new spiritual light. ”

“ XXXIII. Damphool Defunct—Place of his Exile—Description thereof—and Exit.
Sorrow is upon the heart, a heavy grief upon the soul, and a great affliction in the home of me, Doesticks. My friend, the charm of my chamber, the comforter of my lonely hours, the treasure of my heart, the light of my eyes, the sunshine of my existence, the borrower of my clean shirts and my Sunday pantaloons, the permanent clothing and fancy goods debtor of my life, is no more. ”

“ Along the Saintly Way towards the divine life, the midway region of Transmutation is the Country of Sacrifice, it is the Plain of Renunciation. Old passions, old desires, old ambitions and thoughts, are cast away and abandoned, but only to reappear in some more beautiful, more permanent, more eternally satisfying form. ”

“ You fell asleep, to awake in the morning to a new combat and a new - prayer. Now the habit of renunciation cools the heat of your desire, and the roses of your youth are growing pale in the - chlorosis of your heavenliness. The soul is saved, the body may perish! ”

“ The Household lost their hope and soul's delight.
—But Providence, that gives and takes away
By his own law, is merciful and just;
Time wants not power to soften all regrets,
And prayer and thought can bring to worst distress
Due resignation. ”

“ It tells of future agony and woe.
Some mighty sorrow, vague and undefined,
But dark, and awful, waits for me, behind
That shadowy cloud. Something of woe and tears--
Of grief, and anguish, is the future years. ”

“ One instant's failure in the probation of life, one momentary syncope of his better nature long years ago, has condemned his whole after-existence to become a climbing of the purgatorial mount, with an agony of pain annually renewed at the season when the earth rejoices. Only a high-strung delicate spirit is capable of such a perennial passion of penitence. ”

“ But—if a boyish heart that had swelled with newborn hope was shrunken suddenly by old, wizened despair—there was at any rate one man-thing about him, for presently he turned his back to her and that ghastly moan—the sob of a suffering man—fell on her ear. ”

“ We lay down our cherished plans with a sigh of resignation, but when baby eyes and baby lips are pleading, God forgive us if we are not so humbly patient, if we accept our burden not without a murmur, or yield not without a struggle! ”

“ It would make the stoutest Heart bleed to hear how many Warnings were then given by dying Penitents, to others not to put off and delay their Repentance to the Day of Distress, that such a Time of Calamity as this, was no Time for Repentance; was no Time to call upon God. I with I could repeat the very Sound of those Groans, and of those Exclamations that I heard from some poor dying Creatures, when in the Hight of their Agonies and Distress ”

“ The abandonment of one's sorrow—that daily, hourly indulgence in grief which the uncheered solitude of a prison begets—soon brings the mind to the narrow range of one or two topics. With the death of hope, all fancy and imagination perish, the springs of all speculation are dried up, and every faculty bent towards one point ”

“ Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow ”

“ Now again another thing, my offspring. I have spoken of the solemn event which has befallen you. Every day you are losing your great men. They are being borne into the earth; so that in the midst of blood you are sitting. ”

“ I smile at it, but I know very well that my visitor has wings and will not stay long. The resignation which comes from despair has a kind of melancholy sweetness. It looks at life as a man sees it from his death-bed, and judges it without bitterness and without vain regrets. ”

“ Upon the spot where they were to lose sight of their native place, and part from those who were to remain behind, they threw themselves upon the ground in an agony of despair, embracing the earth, moistening the heather with their tears, and clinging with hopeless anguish to the necks and plaids of the friends whom they were to see no more. ”

“ And as in response to our inquiry, we receive the look of pity, and the sorrowful shake of the head, it is then, in our deepest agony, amid blinding tears, and hearts almost crushed to despair, we turn to our great Father above, and we ask, why must we part? ”

“ There are two thoughts in this verse which seem to me to be fraught with comfort and hope to us as we gather round this grave. There is the thought of rest. "They rest from their labors." Bethink you of the long life marked by the discipline of sorrow, and by those unwearied labors for others. ”

“ Steeped in sorrow and sad, read I the ancient records,
Long is the tale of years; the tale of sorrow is longer.
Wherefore he who would rule, chiefly must exercise forethought.
This and his keen-edged blade, these must suffice to maintain him. ”

“ Not so the sudden and immediate change, which seems rather like the stroke of some fell misfortune, converting the cheerful hours into dark, brooding melancholy. Tears may—they do—fall lightly on some; they creep with noiseless step, and youth and age glide softly into each other without any shock to awaken the thought that says, Adieu to this! ”

“ You are, as usual, the victim of cold and hunger, suffering from destitution and want. Then there are indications of a bold spirit, ambitious and energetic, bursting out through all the gloom of your dark condition, and a small whispered word in your ear, tells you to hope! ”

“ The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake largely of its dull patience,—in winter expecting the sun of spring. In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ But of her far keener suffering, for the loss she had sustained, little shew was made; for real misery delights not in reproaches and complaints. It is like charity and love—silent, long suffering and mild. ”

“ If it should be the fate of any of you to count the moments of captivity, in sorrow and in pain, pining in a dungeon's damps, may you find refuge in the recollection of the example you this day set to those who may be called to pass judgment on your lives! ”

“ Let us, therefore, labour whilst we can to secure our being admitted into this happy rest. What do we behold in this perishable life, if not grief and mourning, and what ought above all to afflict the faithful,—a too great abandonment and contempt of the law of God. ”

“ It is almost impossible to read the noble original without finding every word swollen with a sigh or broken with a sob. A heart pregnant with distress, and striving to utter expressions descriptive of its feelings, which are repeatedly interrupted by an excess of grief, is most sensibly painted throughout the whole. ”

“ After serving for thirty years to be thrust again into bondage where a deeper degradation and sorrow and hopeless toil were to be his portion for the remaining years of his existence. In deep despair and overwhelmed with grief, he made his escape to the woods, determined to put an end to his sorrows by perishing with cold and hunger. ”

“ The calm face of the youth, the grave and silent grief of the paternal-looking man, and the unbridled emotion of the boy, all speak of a parting fraught with intense sorrow. It might be any parting—but is it not more reasonable to assume that it means the parting which involves no return? ”