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There are times even in the midst of disappointment when Jeremiah has some gleam of hope for the future. He predicts the days when "a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth."[25] Such times he himself was never to enjoy. He lived to see the Babylonian invasion, Jerusalem besieged and laid waste, and his people taken captive. The reward of his faithful warnings was to be cast into prison by the ungrateful King Zedekiah. Finally he was carried by the remnant of his people into Egypt, where he died in a sad and lonely old age.

[25] Jeremiah, chapter xxiii. verse 5.

Once in a moment of discouragement early in life, his grief had burst forth in words which might well express the feelings of his old age: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!"[26]

[26] Jeremiah, chapter ix. verse 1.

All the pathos of these words is conveyed in Michelangelo's wonderful figure of Jeremiah. The story of his life is written in his face and attitude. He is an old man, with long gray beard, but he still has the splendid vigor which comes from plain and simple living. He sits with bowed head, lost in thought, his long life passing in review before his mind's eye. His message is spoken, his race is run; he is weary of life and longs to die. There is something inexpressibly moving in his profound melancholy.

The painter has placed just behind the prophet two little figures which are like attendant spirits. They seem to sympathize with Jeremiah's sorrows. The figures ornamenting the sculptured niche remind us of those in the background of the Holy Family and have a similar decorative purpose.

Those who have studied the history of the times in which Michelangelo lived may find in this figure of Jeremiah an expression of the artist's own character. Like the old Hebrew prophet, he lived in the midst of a corruption which he was helpless to remedy, and which saddened his inmost soul. His own life was full of disappointments. In his lonely old age he wrote a sonnet, which is not unlike some of Jeremiah's utterances, and which is a clue to the meaning of the picture:—

"Borne to the utmost brink of life's dark sea,
Too late thy joys I understand, O earth!
How thou dost promise peace which cannot be,
And that repose which ever dies at birth.
The retrospect of life through many a day,
Now to its close attained by Heaven's decree,
Brings forth from memory, in sad array,
Only old errors, fain forgot by me,—
Errors which e'en, if long life's erring day,
To soul destruction would have led my way.
For this I know—the greatest bliss on high
Belongs to him called earliest to die."