My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is—the verse moves from physical degradation to psychological and spiritual emptiness: peace is gone, happiness is forgotten. The phrase "my soul is bereft" suggests an ontological loss; the deepest self is emptied of its vital qualities. Theologically, the forgetting of happiness suggests that suffering has become so total that joy is not merely absent but incomprehensible; the sufferer cannot even remember what happiness felt like. This represents the psychological reality of depression: the loss of positive affect and the inability to imagine recovery. The verse articulates an existential despair in which the previous state of wellbeing seems like a foreign land. Yet the sufferer remembers happiness exists (though cannot access it), suggesting that hope might theoretically return.

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