God allows plagues, miserable famines, and war to arise, to terrify us and drive out mans sins. The realm England because of its subjects and numberless sins to be punished by pestilence
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
"There's solace everywhere!"
Here the speaker in the poem glances at the sky to see light that he didn't expect in the middle of his gloom. In the following stanza he will disregard them, but the hope was there even if he chose to ignore it.
It's a symbol of love and sacrifice. Della really wants to give Jim a present that will go with his gold watch which was a prized possession to Jim. And Jim wanted to get Della a comb for her beautiful hair. However, they both didn't have money so they made a sacrifice to get each other a present. Della cut off her beautiful hair to get Jim the chain, and Jim got rid of his watch to buy her the comb. Even though, the gifts are now worthless it shows how they thought of each other and made a sacrifice to get each other a gift.
The honesty of the little girl for giving the coin she back