Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

Smiles likens hope to a guiding sun: it does not remove the “burden,” but changes how it is carried. When one moves toward a desired future—improvement, reform, self-help—the weight of hardship is metaphorically thrown behind, no longer dominating one’s field of vision. The image suggests that orientation matters: progress is partly psychological, achieved by fixing attention on a goal rather than on suffering. In keeping with Smiles’s Victorian moral philosophy, the line implies that perseverance and forward motion transform adversity into something survivable, even if it remains real. Hope thus functions as an active force that reorders experience and sustains effort.