Athirst

Then fury spurred their courage, and behold, / As ravening wolves, when darkness hides the day, / Stung with mad fire of famine uncontrolled, / Prowl from their dens, and leave the whelps to stay, / With jaws athirst and gaping for the prey. / So to sure death, amid the darkness there, / Where swords, and spears, and foemen bar the way, / Into the centre of the town we fare. / Night with her shadowy cone broods o'er the vaulted air.

With joy from out the hollow wood they bound; / first, dire Ulysses, with his captains two, / Thessander bold and Sthenelus renowned, / down by a pendent rope come sliding to the ground. / Then Thoas comes; and Acamas, athirst / for blood; and Neoptolemus, the heir / of mighty Peleus; and Machaon first; / and Menelaus; and himself is there, / Epeus, framer of the fatal snare.

I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

To this extenuated spectre, perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year; but when ahungered and athirst to famine—when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house—Divine Mercy remembers the mourner, […]

Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

I, that forever feel athirst for glory, Could at this moment be content to lie Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.

O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, That were athirst for sleep and no more life And no more love, for peace and no more strife!

1913, Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener, translated from the Bengali by the author, 5, I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.