Quotations

“I am thirsty, so thirsty.”

Original: J’ai soif, si soif! — Physical thirst becomes an intense expression of spiritual and existential longing. · A Season in Hell, Night in Hell, 1873 (French)

Arthur Rimbaud

“I should really love to have a few words from home.”

A simple expression of homesickness during his years abroad · Letter from Europe, August 1833

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“I am drawn toward that which vanishes without a trace.”

Original: Mich zieht es zu dem hin, was spurlos vergeht. — Reveals his fascination with impermanence and vanishing things · Letter to Erhard Buschbeck, 1913 (German)

Georg Trakl

“Please dear Lizzie, send me a flower from the bog, plucked specially for me.”

A simple object from home becomes a tangible answer to homesickness · Letter to Lizzie Healy, 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“You have no idea of how I suffer with this longing for the swish of the reeds at Slane and the voices I used to hear coming over the low hills of Currabwee.”

Homesickness is expressed through remembered sounds of the Boyne landscape · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“It is true what people in the East say: whoever has once tasted that air returns there if he can, despite all the hardships of continual travel.”

Original: Prawda to, co powiadają ludzie wschodni, że kto raz tamtego powietrza zakosztował, to jeżeli może, nazad tam znów powraca, pomimo wszystkich niewygód ciągłej podróży. — Travel leaves an enduring longing for places that have profoundly altered one's sense of life. · Letter to his mother, 24 November 1837 (Polish)

Juliusz Słowacki

“How is Navan? Remember me to the pump on the market square when next you go there, and the clock over Walshe’s.”

His affection for home extends to its most ordinary familiar landmarks · Letter to Paddy Healy, 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Of course I want to come to you, very much as I want to come to Heaven.”

An unusually candid statement of affection and longing · Letter to Katharine Coman, 1891

Katharine Lee Bates

“I would very much like to see you.”

Original: Hélas je voudrais bien te voir. — The simple expression reveals a rare moment of tenderness in Rimbaud’s late correspondence. · Letter to Isabelle Rimbaud, 17 June 1891 (French)

Arthur Rimbaud

“To love Christ more—this is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul.”

A concise expression of the spiritual longing that shaped her life and writing · Letter to a young relative, 23 September 1873

Elizabeth Prentiss

“If I could only have news from home I should be perfectly contented.”

Showing how little he needed beyond contact with home to feel content · Letter from Europe

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

“I could not bear brick horizons, and all my dreams were calling me home.”

Expresses his enduring attachment to rural Meath · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“Into my poems I poured the longing for music.”

Links the cadence of her lyrics to an unsung musical ambition · Quoted autobiographical remark on her verse

Georgia Douglas Johnson

“But I suppose some of us erotic lads, vide myself, were placed here just to eat our hearts out with longing for unattainable things, especially for that friendship beyond understanding.”

A private admission of hunger for a love he could not safely name in public · Letter to Alain Locke, 3 March 1923

Countee Cullen

“Stronger is the love that awakens from longing than that which stays awake on memories.”

Original: Sterkere er den kjærlighet som vekker av lengsel enn den som holder våken av minner. — Compares the forward-looking intensity of longing to retrospective memory · Attributed remark (Norwegian)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“My longing for peace and fulfillment is so great.”

Original: Meine Sehnsucht nach Frieden und Erfüllung ist so groß. — Expresses the intense yearning for quietude that runs through his late work · Letter to Ludwig von Ficker, 1914 (German)

Georg Trakl

“I would give £100 for two days in Ireland with nothing to do but ramble on from one delight to another.”

Measures the intensity of his homesickness in characteristically concrete terms · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 20 July 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I am always homesick. I hear the roads calling, and the hills, and the rivers wondering where I am. It is terrible to be always homesick.”

His longing for Ireland transforms its landscape into a living presence · Letter to Katharine Tynan, 6 January 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“I thirsted for travel and adventure.”

A simple expression of the wanderlust that accompanied his attachment to home · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

“You are always in my heart and in my longings.”

A direct expression of enduring attachment across separation · Letter to Katharine Coman, 1893

Longing
Love

Katharine Lee Bates

“My heart beats as if it would fly to you, my own fierce creature.”

Intense paternal love · Letter to his son Arnold (as quoted in Edward Dowden, Studies in Literature, 1878)

Walter Savage Landor

“Too much of the book is born out of the incurable heartache, the nostalgia for impossible things.”

Naming the ache that fed the later Fiona prose · Letter on The Dominion of Dreams

William Sharp

“And will you remember that my only unfulfilled longing is to have the lead in Poetry?”

A candid expression of literary ambition from an editor who was also determined to be recognised as a poet · Letter to Harriet Monroe, 29 May 1924

Eunice Tietjens

“Scarcely was the last line written when I stole out through a back door and set my face for home.”

Writing crystallised his homesickness into immediate action · Autobiographical letter to Lewis Chase, 6 June 1917

Francis Ledwidge

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Topic: Longing