The speaker here rejects the gentle comforts of happiness, imagined as a warm wife who brings restful sleep. Instead, she pledges herself to Sorrow, calling Sorrow her mistress and claiming she wants that favour for life. Staying awake through the dark hours becomes a deliberate, almost religious act: she suffers so that her songs can meet a new day, one that no longer remembers the physical pleasures of her body.
The mood is intense, nocturnal, and slightly obsessive. There is little softness here; sleeplessness and emotional pain are turned into a chosen vocation. The title “Flagellant” reinforces this: like a religious penitent who whips themselves, the speaker treats suffering as a necessary path to artistic vision. The result is not self-pity but a strange, defiant dedication to sorrow as the price of ecstasy.