“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.”

2005

2005

Faliero, Act V. Sc. 2.
Marino Faliero (1885)
Context: Farewell, and peace be with you if it may.
I have lost, ye have won this hazard: yet perchance
My loss may shine yet goodlier than your gain
When time and God give judgment. If there be
Truth, true is this, that I desired the right
And ye with hands as red sustain the wrong
As mine had been in triumph. Have your will:
And God send each no bitterer end than mine.

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

(20th March 1824) Metrical Tales. Tale IV.— The Troubadour
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Heathcliff (Ch. XXXIII).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my hard constitution, and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations, I ought to, and probably shall remain above ground, till there is scarcely a black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe — almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring — it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought; and by compulsion that I notice anything alive or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea. I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be reached — and soon — because it has devoured my existence. I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me — but they may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. Oh, God! It's a long fight, I wish it were over!

Fragment 67, as translated by R. Lattimore http://www.rhapsodes.fll.vt.edu/arkhilokhos67.htm<br>Variant translations:<br>Soul, my soul, don&#x27;t let them break you,<br>all these troubles. Never yield:<br>though their force is overwhelming,<br>up! attack them shield to shield...<br> &quot;Archilochos: To His Soul&quot; : A fragment http://web.archive.org/20030629194753/geocities.com/joncpoetics/translations/Archsoul.htm as translated from the Greek by Jon Corelis http://web.archive.org/20030805055937/www.geocities.com/joncpoetics/<br>Take the joy and bear the sorrow,<br>looking past your hopes and fears:<br>learn to recognize the measured<br>dance that orders all our years.<br>&quot;Archilochos: To His Soul&quot; : A fragment, as translated from the Greek by Jon Corelis <br class="br">Fragments <br class="br">Context: Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,<br>up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault<br>of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.<br>Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,<br>nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.<br>Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you<br>give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.

Jace Herondale, to Zachariah, pg. 236
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)