The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-01-21
Written for The Prison Mirror.
SORROW.


TO know and appreciate happiness
one must first to have known sorrow,
not the mild evanescent breath of sad
ness, as healing as it may be tieeting,
which serves to enhance the lesser
pleasures of existence and retains
the necessary darker setting from
which looms the jewel contentment;
but that bitter sorrow which floods the
heart and sears the brain, that destroys
little by little, pleasure, peace and hope,
all regard for fellowman, all respect
for self, a Nidhogg at the Yggdrasil, the
hemlock brew which flows through the
veins to paralyze; so sorrow gnaws at
the life strings, flows through artery
and vein, traverses every nerve, to fell
or paralyZe the mental forces; while
the desire for fame, wealth and place
is weakened, faith in God, country and
people dulled, life itself misery and a
curse to self and fellowman; life
whose very sorrow is the fuel that
maintains existence. True there are
exceptions wherein sorrow has stimu-
lated action, has been the secret force
which attracts the desire to do, to be,
solely as a centerforce to the has been.
The ennobling and degrading effects
of sorrow, open and secret, has been
most powerfully depicted by Haw-
thOrne in his Scarlet Letter." How we
feel that intense longing of each to clasp
hand, and, eye to eye, heart to heart,
pour forth the sorrow that filled and
wrecked the life, that scared the soul,
and blighted the name and fame of the
parson, boiling and bubbling, a witches
brew, from whose caldron the devils
of secret torture burst their bounds
and pour forth weird host of demons,
in seething lava-tlde of sorrow! In
Hester the longing to commune with
the author of her sorrow, is equal to,
nay more intense than the pastors: its
publicity, however, produces the diff
ference in result. The sorrow and
shame were there, but not the secrecy.
Turn where she might her eye rested
upon its token, little Pearl: the letter
on the breast, the word of scorn, the
averted look and downcast eye, every
where remembrance of her sorrow
was met only to strengthen, to build
up a new being, new life, new
name, life spent in atOnement, in
generous deeds and words of kindly,
heartfelt sympathy. We always pity
Dinwoodie, but Hester we revere, one
the rule, the other the exception.
SO, too, Poe has given us a deep
glimpse of soul tortured and disfg-
ured by sorrows spectrical form a
momentary glimpse, but one so weird,
so uncanny. we scarce may forget it.
Do we not, even now see him, there
alone in his room, moodily lost in sor-
rows thought, NEARLY mapping"
"When suddenly there came tapping"
and sorrow, for a moment fled, again
returns; but the hope that ION the
uOI1OW uC Will IOdNc Illc-OUIlcI
have flown BEFORE" is not realized for
the morrow, each succeeding morrow
finds that sorrow "never fitting, still is
sitting, still is sitting-on the pallid
bust of Pallas, just above my chamber
door, and my soul from out that shad-
ow-shall be lifted-nevermore."
No picture of sorrow can be more
deeply impressive than Poe has given
us in the Raven
Perhaps no line in prose or poetical
literature is more expressive of hidden
sorrow, than that line of Shelley's,
"Come, be happy, sit by me, shadow
vested misery" Misery and sorrow,
misery the happier of the two, strong
er prop, comforting friend upon
whom sorrow leans. Misery may live
and thrive. "Be happy" for misery
loves company" but sorrow is silent,
hidden, perhaps secret; misery can be
comforted, sorrow never. Affections
bruise and soften, misery breaks the
skin, grief stabs, but sorrow is all
of these. a mental leprosv hidden vet