THE CHAPLET OF SORROW.
So find we profit by losing of our prayers. — Shakespeare.
It has been sikl that " Sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," on epigram too lovely aud suggestive to dispute; and yet to the ungifted vision the memory of vanished bliss seems more like a bitter balm that heals the smarting wound and brings to us through painful channels a knowledge better than we knew. We have to go in sad company sometimes if we would find a fitting cliaplet for the brow of Care. " Make not yqur-rosaiy of yew berries," ?"y& Keats, when in hL elfin ode to
Melancholy he bids its victims 1 to " glut J . npir sorrow on a mormiig rose." No doubt his " wakeful anguish " was often 'oothed by visions of that beauty which to him was a synonym for truth. Fortunately theie arc vciy few whose sorrow could be eased by merely dwelling on delights so vapoious and fleeting. A stern unyielding mistress, and embrace of Sorrow is too thorny, her endearments too cruel, to permit of luxuiy in woe. Though for the young and inexperienced " far-off unhappy things" in art or poetry may hold a tender glamour, those who have reached maturity and tasted pain may well look askance at sorrow. Therefore, Bless God. all ye who suffer not Moie grief than ye can weep for. Certainly those who have worn the rue would " fain wear it with a difference,"' albeit it is the appointed cross, the daily burden, that fits the shoulder best. This it was that made me move As light as oarr er birds in ail ; I 2oved -the weight I had to bear Because it needed help of Love " I am old and blind," sang Milton ; " men point at me as smitten by God's frown; yet am I not cast down." A congeries of miseries, and yet now " fitly fall " the lines — Mine eye hath found that sid sepulchral rock That was the ccaket of Heaven's richest store, And here through gnef my feeble hands uplock, Yet on the softened quarry would I scoie My plaining veise as lively as befoie, For sure so well msfiucted are my tears That they would fitly fall in ordered characters. A later poet sings thus of sorrow's discipline — My tiee was thick w4h shade O, blast' thine office do, And stup the foliage off to, let the heavens shine thiough. Here surely we get a glimpse of Sorrow's crown — the cliaplet, bare of earthly leaf, irradiated with the glow of heavenly light. Should it not help the traveller, wayworn though he be, to take once more the road and sing beside, the' hedge. " What if the bread be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod to meet the flints' At least it may be said : ' Because the way is short, I thank Tihee, God.' " Patience, the precious fruit of sorrow, watered by prayer — grand river of relief, — has bourgeoned often in the prison cell. "Tie King's Quair," Rutherford's imperisihable "Letters," and the immortal dream transformed the dungeon into a palace of the soul whence forever stream its consolations for those who otherwise might be but dwellers in the dust. From star rays to the dust, from the infinite to the ignominious, the myriad particles that darken and annoy, seems dark descent ; but . .' . Did you ever travel a-foot and somewhat weary through a lengthened street that faced the setting sun? Have you seen the rosy light stretched like a tender veil between the sky and the horizon line? Have you noted the buildings that cut the edges of that light with dark austerity, and seen, betmixt you and the glorious screen that marked the infiinite beyond, the flying dust, the dust that flew across the road and spent itself in air, the dust that chased the footsteps of the hurrying passenger, curling, eddying, and wreathing him in its embrace? You have seen it often without that glorious light, drab and brown and noxious — the nuisance of the crowded street. But if you have seen it but once transformed into a roseate shower, a flying pink perfection, you will know what light can do for the common and unclean, the perishing and the offensive. If it were but given us to behold just once or twice great love in the unlovely, we might find a joy in sorrow. It is, after all, the trodden herb that fills the air with fragrance, the stricken tree — not the most beautiful — that yields its balm. There is so much of compensation in this wonderful and lovely world that a time of sorrow should not, fairly considered, be regarded as the most woful passage in our lives. Have you not seen the nightingale — A pilgrim cooped Into a cage '•* How doth she chant her wonted tale In that her lonely hermitage? Even there her charming melody doth piove That all her boughs are trees, her cage a grove. What a joyful garment for the captive spirit is this unfettered praise '. Indeed, we can hardly measure the benefit of <t habit of thanksgiving, so fine a remedy is it for imaginary woes. The sorrow that finds expression in brooding and repining is woise than a " bootless bene" ; it is a real and very dreadful evil, that, bringing no good to any, is barren and unkind. Do not let your sorrow be a barren one, be you young or old, my hiend. Lonely you may be; but there is gladness waiting for the solitary places, and the wilderness will have its turn to bloom. Stars do not shine upon us in the sun-bright day, and these carrying light from infinite distances have a still greater gloiy, though it is hard to realise it, than the sun illuminating oui earth. We shall not &cc them, however, if we fail of " looking up."' Once, many years ago, in the studio of a gifted but disabled aitist, your fiiend was taught a valuable lesson. A triplefigured statuette of silver lepresenting "The Three Sorrows," beautifully chased, was shown. What were those sorrows, think you? Not material suffering ; not any special anguish ; not the causes, but the effects of sorrow were depicted. The selfish sorrow, the crushing sorrow — if I | remember rightly — and the helping sorrow. The first and third, the last particularly, made deep impression — the helping grief that will blossom into beauty, and fill the heart with notes of praiseful eong, that will issue forth in blessed speech and set the serving hand in motion. Every gardener knows the use of pruning — pruning at times so close and so severe that the fruitfulness of the tree would to the ignoiamt seem quite * im-
perilled. S.iid one, the owner of a splendid vinery, "When my new gardener came he would" have nothing to do with theso Miies unless he could cut them clean down to the stalk. He did, and for two veal's mi' had no grapes, hut this (refeiring to the luscious cluster) is the lehiilt." Clean clown to the stalk, and though collapse and death seem imminent, time and sun and sweet, lefieshing rain revive ; generous growth and burstina: grape attest the wisdom of the pruning, the skill amd method of the gardener's hand. Let us well bewnre. however, of the injudicious pruning of the ignorant ; there is no virtue in surl'eiing when the Almighty Lover has ordained that joy shall be our portion. But, "When the path grows dark by ordinance Divine, stars unperceived before thiough depths of forest shine." So, if God diaws a ckud over each gleaming morn — i Would -«c ask why? It is because all noblest thoughts are born In agony. Only upon some cross- of pain or woe God"s Son may I.e. Each soul redeemed from self and sin must know Its C a". vary. And then, to quote from the same wiiter : . . Some mrunt sublime Of starry Paradise, Disrupted to an hundred hills In falling from the skies, Bringing within it all the rents Of heavenly trees and flowers and fiuits. So oft the doing of God's will Our foolish wills undoeth. Perhaps one of the best cures for sorrow — I do not speak of anodynes — for what so lulling after the first sharp pang is over as the tender sympathy of one who loves and understands? There is a more Divine, a richer remedy, to be found, and that is — occupation with a greater grief, a deeper sorrow than our own. A wise and prayerful man, when speaking to a mother sadly disti cased by the straying of a wayward son. said, "Leave off for the moment praying for your son, and pray in the meantime for some other woman's son." There was deep philosophy in this advice, for who can ask blessing for another and not know his own well, perchance a diying one, replenished ? Who that has known the wourding of a friend, faithful as suoh wounds must be, but has felt the kinship strengthened by the knowledge of the love that prompted it ? 'But if friendship fail, and fail it may, like all things human, when sorrow is but cruel fellowship, "a priestess in the vaults of death," When some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness faileth suddenly, And silence against which you dare not cry Aches round you like a strong disease anct new : What hope, what help? . . . Speak, thou availing Christ, and fill this pause! Let my tears drop like amber, whi!e I go In reach of thy divinest voice complete In humanest affections — thus in sooth To lose the sense of losing. So if bitter experience bring to us tho dulcimer of patience, the "perplexed music" will resolve itself into unsuspected harmony, the tangled threads that puzzled tired fingers and the weary brain will fall into a royal order. We shall not murmur, "Where is any certain time or measured music m such notes as these?" for we shall have learnt, with "angels leaning from the golden seat," The issue cf completed cadences. . . And for our loved and lost oh, take, bereaved, this comfort to your bosoms : * . . . God keeps a niche In heaven to hold our idols; and albeit He brake them to our faces, and denied That our close kisses should impair their •white, . . We shall behold them raised complete, The dust shook from their beauty. Let us complete our chaplet with roses red and white. Do any linger at life's la. c t portal in lonely suffering, or a mist of pain? Then pray: . . . O Christ, come tenderly By Thy forsaken Sonship, end the red, Diear wine press, and the wilderness outspiead, And the lone garden where Thine glory Fell bloody from Thy brow ; by all of those Peimitted desolations comfort mine. . . . Interpose ,Vo deathly angel 'twixt my face and Thine, But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose And smile away my mortal to divine. HOUR BY HOUR. (Sent bj " Lavender ") God bioke our years to hours and days that Horn by hoiu And day by day. Just going on a h+tle way, We might be able all along To keep quite strong Should all the weight of life Be laid across our shoukleis, and the future, rife With woe and struggle mcc' us face to face At just one place, We could not go ; Our feet would stop; and so God lays a little on us e\ery day, And never, I believe, on all the way Will burdens bear so deep Or pathways he so steep But we can go, if, by God's power, We only bear the burden of the hour.
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Otago Witness, Issue 2814, 19 February 1908, Page 72
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1,936THE CHAPLET OF SORROW. Otago Witness, Issue 2814, 19 February 1908, Page 72
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