" Felix Randal http://www.bartleby.com/122/29.html", lines 1-4
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Illustrated Weekly of India, 22/12/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.
Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Context: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p
“Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —”
"To One in Paradise", st. 1 (1834).
Context: Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine —
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Departures (1964), translated by Michael Cuanach http://web.archive.org/20041217155724/members.tripod.com/~Cuanach/anna.html
“Nevertheless I long—I pine, all my days—
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.”
V. 219–220 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
“Bird of time –
in Kyoto, pining
for Kyoto.”
Basho, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, London, 1985, p. 43 (Translation: Lucien Stryk)
Even in Kyōto—
hearing the cuckoo's cry—
I long for Kyōto
Classical Japanese Database, Translation #55 http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/translation/view/55 (Translation: Robert Hass)
Individual poems
“A sensible man takes pleasure in what he has instead of pining for what he has not.”
Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus
