The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 22 Page 19

to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was for ever in it an essential character of plaintiveness.

A loud or low expression of anguish — the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister’s voice grew high and commanding — when it gushed irrepressibly upward — when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and