psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give
the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly
causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also
to be well-nigh incurable, as Percy Bysshe Shelley has given in his
"Stanzas written near Naples." No critical expounder of the Stoical
philosophy can interpret the stoical temper which interposes a sullen
but dauntless pride to attacking sorrow as William Ernest Henley has
done:

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed."

Nor can any preacher put in so vital a contrast to this despairing
defiance with which pride challenges sorrow, the joyous victory which a
trusting love wins over it by submitting to it, as John Greenleaf
Whittier has done in "The Eternal Goodness":

"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.

"I know not where His islands lift