Summary
The speaker describes her lowest moment. Hope departs from the speaker when she is needed most.
Analysis
In the concluding stanzas of the poem, the speaker depicts Hope's abandonment of her. She emphasizes the importance of Hope's "song" in moments of despair, while also showing what it is to be entirely without Hope. These last sections are the poem's logical conclusion as they show the climax of the speaker's emotional arc. Forced to confront the lowest moment of her life, she is left without even the glimmer of Hope which has occasionally comforted her.
The fourth stanza begins with a comment on Hope's falseness in the face of adversity: "False she was, and unrelenting; / When my last joys strewed the ground." The speaker is in turmoil, her "last joys" strewn all over "the ground." She then deepens this image of her darkest hour: "Even Sorrow saw, repenting, / Those sad relics scattered round." She personifies "Sorrow" by capitalizing its name. She notes that "even Sorrow" finds the tragedy of these "sad relics scattered round" to be pitiful. She means to say that while Hope did not help her, even Sorrow, another personified emotion, was forced to acknowledge her sorry state. The use of the word "relics" suggests that these "joys" have faded and lost their former meaning, comparing them to artifacts from a time when the speaker was happy.
The final section opens with a recognition of the comfort Hope can provide: "Hope, whose whisper would have given / Balm to all my frenzied pain." These lines revisit the earlier description of Hope's whispering peace, stating that it would have been a "balm" to the speaker's "frenzied pain." Now, however, this information only causes her to hurt more, as Hope has departed: "Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven, / Went, and ne’er returned again!" This somewhat celestial description of Hope's exit reveals the depth of the speaker's pain, making clear she has lost Hope when she needed it most. She is in a state of total despair at the poem's conclusion, without hope for the future.
The poem functions as both a comment on the comfort that hope can provide and a recognition of its fleeting nature. The speaker is able to derive solace from Hope in small moments, but finds "her" to be largely inconsistent and unreliable. This confusion and struggle reaches its peak at the end of the poem, when the speaker desperately needs Hope but is abandoned.
