Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery.

The line frames happiness as a heightened, almost luxurious experience when it follows suffering. By casting joy as a “feast” and misery as the “first course,” Suckling suggests that contrast is what sharpens pleasure: deprivation, disappointment, or pain can make subsequent relief feel richer and more intense. The metaphor also carries a faint moral or psychological warning—if joy depends on misery to taste “high,” then human delight may be entangled with hardship, whether through memory, comparison, or the dramatic rhythms of love and fortune. It implies that unbroken ease can dull sensation, while adversity can paradoxically deepen appreciation.