Of all sad words of tongue or pen...

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'
~ John Greenleaf Whittier

The words come from a stanza near the end of a poem titled "Maud Muller." The eponymous heroine is a poor farm girl. One day a man stops at a creek to water his horse near the meadow where she is raking hay. They strike up a conversation that neither will forget as long as they live. The man, however, rides away, marries for status, and becomes a judge. His relatives are dour and greedy, so while he is rich and comfortable, he is never truly happy. Maud marries an uneducated man and though her heart is both wise and good, her life continues with all the cares and sorrows of poverty.

Whittier describes them this way: 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

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The poem does not end there, however. John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker and his views of the afterlife take over the poem at this point as he expresses a hope that justice and love will win out in the hereafter.

The point is, though, that it did not have to be this way in the here and now. The "judge" turned out to be a lousy judge. His poor judgment ruined the lives of both Maud and himself. He had made his choice based on what the world thought was important. He had made the "safe" choice and had convinced himself that it was the right one. It was not. Both characters suffer despair at the decision made by just one.

He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But he who walks wisely will be delivered. Proverbs 28:26

In this poem, the judge's heart was not trusting in the Lord; it was using the 'intellectual criteria' of the world. The farm girl's wisdom, her sweet spirit, and even her good looks were not enough; the judge closed his heart to "health and quiet and loving words." The thing that made his decision for him was thinking of his mother and sisters! His mother valued status, and he realized that his family would not approve of him making a decision based on such a "flimsy emotion" as love. 

Yet the book of Proverbs would judge the man to be a fool. 

The Lesson
Ellicott's commentary on this proverb is rather blunt, observing that the man who is confident in his own reasoning will perish in his folly. It goes on to connect it to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 3:18, "Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become "fools" so that you may become wise."

As sad as the loss of "what might have been" was, there is potentially an even darker tragedy. It would be worse to be so blind and oblivious that the error was never discovered.









http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1193/  illustration public domain from a period textbook