‘Sympathy’ by Emma Lazarus

Sharing the suffering of another is a message of the poem by Emma Lazarus, "Sympathy." “Job and His Comforters,” Luca Giordano. Smithsonian American Art Museum. (Public Domain)

When someone comes into our lives, we encounter them in the middle of their story, in media res. We never fully read the pages of their past, nor do we ever fully know what secret sorrows they carry. “Sympathy” by Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) mirrors life in this respect.

                                 Sympathy

Therefore I dare reveal my private woe, The secret blots of my imperfect heart, Nor strive to shrink or swell mine own desert, Nor beautify nor hide. For this I know, That even as I am, thou also art. Thou past heroic forms unmoved shalt go, To pause and bide with me, to whisper low: “Not I alone am weak, not I apart Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day. Here is my very cross by strangers borne, Here is my bosom-sin wherefrom I pray Hourly deliverance—this my rose, my thorn. This woman my soul’s need can understand, Stretching o'er silent gulfs her sister hand.”

The beginning places the reader in an encounter with two suffering souls without providing a backstory or explanation for the nature of this suffering. However, even without a complete understanding of each individual’s circumstances, our shared human weakness and our own experience with suffering enable us to sympathize with others and enter into their pain so that we carry it alongside them.

Poet Emma Lazarus, circa 1872. (Public Domain)

The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, composed of one octet (set of 8 lines) and one sestet (set of 6 lines).  The opening “therefore” places the reader in the midst of the speaker’s interaction with her fellow sufferer, after she has already resolved to open her heart.  Initially, one may think the speaker intends to extend her sympathy, to draw the other out by offering her own experience.

Instead, the second half of the poem reveals a different understanding of sympathy than one in which only one heart participates. The speaker decides to reveal what she calls “my rose, my thorn”:  to be open about her own weaknesses and struggles with sin, in order to both give and receive sympathy.

The speaker and her confidante receive mutual comfort from the awareness of their shared condition: “That even as I am, thou also art.” As they learn “to pause and bide” together, both are freed to give and receive comfort. Their struggles assume a redemptive quality and become both rose and thorn.

The Soul’s Need

It costs the speaker nothing to extend pity towards the other sufferer in the poem, but it is the sympathy illustrated in the poem that wins passage into the confidante’s heart. Though the speaker’s openness requires courage, the revelation of her own difficulty opens the path for her confidante to recognize herself in another, prompting her to whisper back the speaker’s own words of comfort: “Not I alone am weak, not I apart/ Must suffer, struggle, conquer day by day.”

The poem’s language emphasizes the quiet, unassuming bravery required to offer such active, living sympathy. The speaker must “dare” to tell someone who, like herself, must “conquer day by day.” The confidante moves past “heroic forms” and sits with the one who acknowledges her weakness, recognizing that the speaker demonstrated heroism by baring her “imperfect heart.” To hide these imperfections would set the speaker among the impersonal, idealized “heroic forms.” The speaker’s flaws and trials are a blessing in disguise by reassuring the confidante that she does not suffer alone.

A first reading of the poem immediately called to mind a scene from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which offers an illustration of such sympathy in action. In the novel, Dorothea Brooke arrives at a pivotal moment of feeling engulfed in her own suffering while also yearning to ease the suffering of others, particularly Rosamond Vincy. Rather than surrender to self-pity, Dorothea consciously decides to transform a moment of disappointment into a way to better comfort others:

“All this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of driving her back from effort.”

Dorothea Brooke (Juliet Aubrey) extends sympathy to a friend, in “Middlemarch.” (WGBH Productions)

Shifting her perspective to the contemplation of Rosamond’s pain rather than her own, Dorothea can approach her the next day, “filled with the need to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke.” Dorothea speaks of her own weakness. She shares that she knows the burden Rosamond carries and understands the difficulty in overcoming certain character flaws.

Met with such overwhelming sympathy, Rosamond is moved to tears and feels “as if a wound within her had been probed.” As they were united in their suffering, “Pride was broken down between these two.” The scene plays out the final lines of the poem: “This woman my soul’s need can understand/ Stretching o'er silent gulfs her sister hand.”

Across Silent Gulfs

The speaker in Lazarus’s poem recognizes that being open to receiving sympathy is just as important as extending. The quotation in the poem’s second half is still the speaker, saying words she knows her confidante needs to hear. The speaker recognizes that each soul longs to hear the same words of comfort from another: The reassurance that we do not suffer alone.

Sympathy bridges the silent gulfs and speaks those words under varied guises. When both souls come as they are, they frankly acknowledge their struggles and sufferings rather than assuming the appearance of perfection. Their need becomes a gift to the other and a source of comfort.

Sympathy can’t fully take away another’s cross. But it can encourage another by offering a commiserating understanding and being willing to carry one’s own burden alongside them.

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