Longsuffering

“ We go on and on, and bear much—stoically—for weeks, months, years, indeed, and then—suddenly, we can bear no more! We reach the pinnacle of pain. We cry out—with the poignancy of it. But after that, I have a fancy, we can never suffer so much again. ”

“ We move about, or sit on our beds, silent, almost motionless, in the speechless agony of woe, in the mute eloquence, of unutterable despair. After four long weary years of battle and marches, of prayers and tears, of pain and sacrifice, of wounds and woe, of blood and death, such an ending of our hopes, such a shocking disappointment, is bitter, cruel, crushing. Few tears are shed; there is no time for weakness or sentiment. The grief is too deep, the agony too terrible to find vent through the ordinary channels of distress. Hope seems forever buried, and naturally too. ”

“ But all human pain has its intervals of relief. The pain is suspended, and the system recruits itself to endure the coming paroxysm. An hour of illusion—an hour of sleep—an hour's respite of any sort, to six hours of pain—and so the soul, in anguish, finds strength for its long labour, abridged by neither death nor madness. ”

“ I feel oppressed by the weight of my sorrowful yearning that hourly grows more unbearable and more hopeless; my lungs seem filled with leaden air, and all the blood in my heart stands still. In thinking of the time that must be dragged through till this same hour to-morrow, I feel neither the strength nor courage to endure it with its intolerable succession of eternal minutes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The eyes close again, but not to sleep; we seek only to shut out the light from which we sicken. But the inward sorrow rises only the more distinct: all is remembered, not a pang is spared; and the very rest given to the body only renders its sense of suffering more acute. Misery has many bitter moments; but, I believe, the first awakening after any great sorrow is the one of its most utter agony. How will it ever be possible to get through the long, the coming day? ”

“ Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow,
And time doth weary time with her complaining.
She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow,
And both she thinks too long with her remaining.
Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining.
Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps,
And they that watch see time how slow it creeps.
Which all this time hath overslipped her thought,
That she with painted images hath spent,
Being from the feeling of her own grief brought
By deep surmise of others’ detriment,
Losing her woes in shows of discontent. ”

“ Finally, it is the general aim of these addresses to bring courage and hope to the suffering, to proclaim joy in the midst of deep sorrow, to lead us gently and softly through the hour of deep affliction. This age is to me as a shade that stands weeping over its own corpse, from which it has been driven forth by a host of diseases, unable to tear its gaze from the form so beloved of old, and trying in despair every means to enter again the home of pestilence. ”

“ Foster, "that such circumstances were not so melancholy as dying after a lingering disorder, in a darkened room, with weeping friends around one, and whilst the shattered frame sank under slow exhaustion." But experience and human feelings contradict this observation of the resigned and unhappy sufferer; we look to death, under such an aspect, as the approach of rest; but human nature shrinks from the violent struggle, the momentary [Pg 449] but fierce convulsion, plunging us, as it were, into the abyss of the grave. ”

“ These things will be, but oh, across the hills,
Behind me in the dark, what things will be?
—Well, even if sorrow fills me through and through
Until my life be pain and pain my life,
Shall I not bear myself and my own life?
—A little life, O Lord, a little sorrow.
And I remember once when I was ill
That the whole world seemed breaking through with me,
Who lay so light and still; stillness availed not,
My weakness being a thing of power, I thought. ”

“ But then consider, to what purpose should we desire a long life? since with the usual burdens and infirmities and misfortunes that attend it, it is but the same thing over again or worse, so many more nights and days, summers and winters, with less pleasure and relish, every day a return of the same and greater pains and troubles, but perhaps with less strength and patience to bear them. ”

“ Their wretched lives are full of pain, Wild agonies of nerve and brain; And every heart-beat, every breath, Is a convulsion worse than death! Sleep, sleep, O city! though within The circuit of your walls there be No habitation free from sin, And all its nameless misery ”

“ Those visages reddened by the inclement air, those pitiful bent or twisted limbs, the swollen or enfeebled flesh, the dull eyes, already dead, are painful to behold. At their age, habituated to misery, they ought to feel only the suffering of the moment, not to trouble themselves about the past, and no longer to care for the future. ”

“ Death amid the smoke, and excitement, and glory of battle, was not half so terrible as in the awful calmness and chill horror of the scaffold! And sadder yet, to think of my friends, who would count the weary months that had gone by, and wish and long for my return, till hope became torturing suspense, and suspense deepened into despair. ”

“ For in such case, worn out by anxiety, and it may be by much watching, our very excess of grief rocks itself to sleep, before we have had time to realise its cause; and we waken, with a start of agony like a fresh stab, to the consciousness of the one awful vacancy, which shall never, while the world endures, be filled again. ”

“ The late stress upon me had enabled me to put off illness, but not to put it away; I knew that it was coming on me now, and I knew very little else, and was even careless as to that.
For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor—anywhere, according as I happened to sink down—with a heavy head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. Then there came, one night which appeared of great duration, and which teemed with anxiety and horror; and when in the morning I tried to sit up in my bed and think of it, I found I could not do so. ”

“ The disturbed sleep only exhausts the sufferer's strength and makes still more unequal the struggle between the fear, horror or shame, and the forces by which the attempt is made to subdue the ever-rising storm. ”

“ That grime of ages "lends a sort of warmth, and suggests flesh and blood," so that the suffering is not a cold and frosty incrustation, with which we have nothing to do, but a real tragedy going on before our eyes, by which our sympathies are most deeply moved. ”

“ And I steered, too tired for anxiety, too tired for connected thought. I had moments of grim exultation and then my heart would sink awfully at the thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark deck, full of fever-stricken men—some of them dying. ”

“ The most terrible ailments that flesh is heir to, and the greatest suffering that “age, ache, and penury, can lay on nature,” were present all around. And then there were others in whom the flame of life, after flickering lowly, had just gone out. ”

“ But this I do assert that no one has ever lost so much and no one has ever fallen into such a depth of misery. Time too, instead of lightening my grief, can but add to it: for other sorrows lose their sting as time passes, but my sorrow can but grow daily, as I feel my present misery and think on my past happiness. ”

“ Then, being wholly overcome by exhaustion of body and mind, and having endured such fatigues and sufferings from hunger and thirst, without speaking of terror, as have seldom oppressed a poor feeble human being, I fell into a swoon, from which I awoke only to be assailed by a violent fever and delirium, the direct consequences of my superhuman exertions, that kept me a-bed, in a condition between life and death, for more than two weeks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Walk, walk, walk with bleeding feet and smarting joints; walk with aching back and trembling knees; walk, though the senses grow giddy with fatigue, though the eyes droop with sleep, though every nerve, demanding rest, sets in motion its tiny alarm of pain. Death is at the end of that devious, winding maze of paths, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again. ”

“ And then one morning, before the dawn broke, when life seemed to be at its lowest point, when hope was nearly gone, and the shadow of Death fell across the sick man’s face, there was suddenly a faint, strange flutter. ”

“ And then I realised a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew. I seemed an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting. For one brief, terrible moment sensation came back to me. That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling a thousand times intensified, that and a black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. ”

“ No circle in any hell would have contained more concentrated suffering than was crowded into his every conscious moment—horrible, brute, physical suffering, tearing at every nerve, suffering that degraded him, that left him no humanity. ”

“ Body aching from the fierce winter's blast and the fingers gone stiff, immovable, almost unfeeling ... with no hope for the future, but always the ceaseless watch and wait until the great Peace of Death overtakes the tired body and a troubled soul leaves its burden to be carried on by those who follow after. ”

“ Those who had lain longest rose, took up their burdens, and went groaning over the sky-line and out of sight. Every moment new faces, purple with effort or white with exhaustion, rose out of the depths—all were bitten deep with lines of physical suffering. ”

“ Long after the fever was subdued, and his strength returning, his mind was astray, and even when torturing delusions ceased, and he resumed the perception of surrounding objects, memory and reflection wavered in dizzy confusion, more distressing than either his bodily weakness, or the perpetual pain in his head, which no remedy could relieve. ”

“ At first the increase of sickness in spring brought increase of toil to such of us, who, as yet spared to life, bestowed our time and thoughts on our fellow creatures. We nerved ourselves to the task: "in the midst of despair we performed the tasks of hope." We went out with the resolution of disputing with our foe. We aided the sick, and comforted the sorrowing; turning from the multitudinous dead to the rare survivors, with an energy of desire that bore the resemblance of power, we bade them—live. ”

“ Fifty more lay at the point of death, and the others, crippled and staggering with the onslaught of disease, moved to and fro at their tasks, their fingers numbed with cold, their hearts frozen with despair. ”

“ The physical pains, exposures, dangers, colds, heats, sleepless nights, long marches, scant food, poor raiment, &c., would be bad enough,—but we must not loose sight of the mental anguish, that memory, only two faithful, would inflict upon us, and the terror that alternate hope and despair would compel us to undergo. ”

“ In the silence that followed, there came again to them, clear through the stillness, and haunting in its persistence, the crying of the beast that sought its meat from God.
CHAPTER XXV A SCENTED LETTER There is no exhaustion more complete or more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most utter and the most heartrending. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness, and dizziness, and horror, become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling. ”

“ That, in such a case, my limbs would have been confined to a coffin, and my coffin to a grave, and that I should instantly have been suffocated, did not occur to destroy my supposition. Neither did this supposition overwhelm me with terror or prompt my efforts at deliverance. My state was full of tumult and confusion, and my attention was incessantly divided between my painful sensations and my feverish dreams.
There is no standard by which time can be measured but the succession of our thoughts and the changes that take place in the external world. ”

“ 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. ”