Here we suffer grief and pain

“Here we suffer grief and pain” is a Sunday-school hymn whose promise of an unbroken life in Heaven meets a listener unable to believe it. Sung by four children while Tess faces an uncertain future, it turns familiar religious consolation into a measure of her isolation: if she cannot entrust the children to Providence, she feels responsible for becoming their providence.

The hymn in the scene

The singing begins after a brief pause. One child offers a tentative note; a second voice strengthens it, then a third and a fourth join in unison. The children have learned the words at Sunday-school, and sing of grief and pain on earth, parting, and a Heaven in which parting will end. Their voices gather into a small, orderly chorus, but the scene does not present that harmony as proof that the promise is secure.

The singers continue with what the narration describes as the phlegmatic passivity of people who have long since settled the question and see no need for further thought. Their faces are strained as they form the syllables, and they look toward the centre of the flickering fire. The youngest child's notes stray into the pauses left by the others. This combination of practiced certainty and imperfect singing gives the hymn a concrete, domestic presence while leaving its religious assurance open to doubt.

A promise Tess cannot accept

Tess turns away from the children and goes back to the window. Darkness has fallen outside, but her effort to peer into it conceals her tears. The hymn's central promise is therefore heard against a scene of private grief: the children sing that earthly parting will be overcome, while Tess cannot make herself believe the faith on which that consolation depends.

The narration makes the consequence of that disbelief explicit. If Tess could trust what the children sing, she could leave them confidently to Providence and their future kingdom. Because she is not sure, she feels that she must do something herself and become their providence. The hymn thus marks a shift from religious hope to a burden of practical responsibility. It does not simply comfort Tess; its assurance exposes the distance between what the children repeat and what she can believe.

Counterpoint and significance

The hymn's promise is set beside the narrator's reflection on a poetic image of birth as arrival trailing clouds of glory. For Tess and others in her position, the reflection continues, birth is instead an ordeal of degrading personal compulsion, whose gratuitousness the outcome seems unable to justify and can only partly palliate. The contrast widens the scene from Tess's concealed tears to a bleak account of embodied suffering: neither the children's words about Heaven nor the image of glorious arrival can make her experience of life feel redeemed.

The hymn's three movements—present grief, repeated earthly parting, and the assurance of reunion beyond death—supply the scene with a structure that Tess cannot inhabit. Its words are familiar and communally sung, yet their communal certainty does not become hers. By placing that chorus beside the window, the darkness, and Tess's attempt to hide her tears, the narrative makes the hymn a counterpoint rather than a resolution: a promise of future care that leaves Tess feeling answerable for the children in the present.