SYMPATHY — a poem, a father’s gift, and a memory revived

While sorting through old papers and books to clear away what had accumulated over the years, I came across an old volume my father—Late Pandit Janki Nath Misri—had once given me to read when I was in the 10th grade. The book is The Indian Treasury of Verse, edited by S. G. Dunn (Oxford University Press, 1915).

At that age, I could not fully grasp every poem. Yet after joining S. P. College, Srinagar, I returned to the book with a clearer mind and a deeper appetite for meaning. Many of the poems I memorised then remain vivid in my memory even now. One of them was “Sympathy,” and it reads:

Sympathy
I LAY in sorrow, deep distressed,
My grief, a proud man heard;
His looks were cold, he gave me gold,
But not a kindly word.
My sorrow passed -I paid him back,
The gold he gave to me.
Then stood erect and spoke my thanks,
And blessed his Charity.

I lay in want, in grief and pain:
A poor man passed my way;
He bound my head, he gave me bread,
He watched me night and day.
How shall I pay him back again,
For all he did to me.
Oh, gold is great, but greater far
Is heavenly Sympathy!
— C. MACKAY

Today—31 December 2025—I physically laid my hands on that same book again. It had been lying among “junk” and old reading material that I had intended to dispose of. The moment I opened it, memory returned with startling force: on the contents page, I saw my own name, written in my own handwriting from years ago.

What moved me most was not only the rediscovery of the book, but the rediscovery of myself—the student I was, the father I had, and the quiet thread connecting those years to the present.

What I understood then—and what I understand now

As a 10th grader, I likely admired the poem for its rhythm and its moral clarity: one man gives money without warmth; another gives care without calculation. But in college—during those formative years at S. P. College, when one’s inner world expands, and one begins to notice the subtle textures of human behaviour—the poem opened differently.

It is not really a poem about “help” at all. It is a poem about the difference between charity and sympathy.

• Charity can be correct, even generous—yet emotionally distant, almost transactional.
• Sympathy, as Mackay uses it, is not pity. It is presence: a willingness to share the weight of someone else’s pain, to sit beside them, to watch “night and day.”

The proud man’s gold solves a problem but leaves the heart untouched. The poor man’s bread and care, on the other hand, restore something deeper than comfort: they restore dignity, belonging, and faith in humanity. That is why the poem’s final line still lands with such quiet force: “Oh, gold is great, but greater far / Is heavenly Sympathy!”

A link to my father

This book was not simply an anthology. It was a gift with intention behind it—my father’s way of placing good language, strong ideas, and moral clarity into my hands. When I revisited the poem in college, it was not only a literary exercise; it was, in a subtle way, a return to his guidance.

Over time, the poem ceased to be only ink on a page. It became intertwined with:

• a father’s gift,
• my educational journey in Srinagar,
• and the enduring human truth that care is measured not in currency, but in compassion.

I also remember my father sometimes mentioning another “Sympathy.” Perhaps he was referring to the famous poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, with its powerful metaphor of the caged bird and its longing to be free. If so, that too fits the larger theme: whether in Mackay’s gentle moral contrast or Dunbar’s fierce longing, “sympathy” ultimately points to the same thing—an understanding that reaches beyond words into lived experience.

The old book, The Indian Treasury of English Verse, smelled of monsoon damp and forgotten years. Its spine cracked as I opened it, a sound like a distant door. I was not in my college then, but back in the quieter room of my earlier youth, the 10th-grade student I had been. The book was a parting gift from my father, Pandit Janki Nath Misri; its weight in my hands was a weight of expectation. "Read this," he had said, his voice still present in the silent house.

That first reading was a duty, a landscape of words I traversed with diligence but not always with sight. Poems like "Sympathy" by C. Mackay were passed by like familiar stations on a known route. I lay in sorrow, deep distressed… I understood the story—the proud man's gold, the poor man's bread—and noted its moral neatly. It was a lesson, like many others, filed away.

But time has a way of turning lessons into mirrors.

The shift to S.P. College, Srinagar, was the turning of the soil. It was a world of sprawling debates, of heated discussions on philosophy and society in the shadow of the Himalayas, of new friendships forged in the keen intellectual cold. I was building the architecture of my own mind. And in that construction, I returned, as if seeking a foundation stone, to my father's book.

After sixty-five years, I read this poem, Sympathy

This time, "Sympathy" did not offer a lesson. It offered a revelation.

The lines were no longer just ink. The proud man became a type I was beginning to recognize in the world—the benefactor whose gift carries the chill of transaction. The gold was not just a coin; it was no aid given to elevate the giver, not to heal the receiver.

But it was the poor man who now stole my breath.

He bound my head, he gave me bread, / He watched me night and day.

I was recalling the shopkeeper near my college who, seeing a student looking peaky and poring over books late, would slide a cup of kehwa across the counter with a nod, asking for no payment. I remembered the classmate who, when I struggled with a concept, stayed back not to tutor me, but to wrestle with the problem alongside me, sharing the very burden of not knowing. This was not charity. This was kinship. This was watching night and day.

The final couplet became my silent anthem:

Oh, gold is great, but greater far / Is heavenly Sympathy!

The second life of a poem

Books can become “old.” Paper can be yellow. Spines can crack. Yet certain lines do not age at all—because they do not merely sit on the page; they take residence in the mind. And when they return, they return with our whole history attached to them.

So, this memory is no longer just about finding a forgotten book in a pile meant for disposal. It is about finding, in a few familiar verses, a compass I did not know I had been carrying all these years: the ability to distinguish between the glitter of assistance and the glow of genuine human kindness—and to recognise, with gratitude, the quiet inheritance my father placed in my hands.

Happy New Year-2026

Sham Misri,

Jammu.