Meaning of “Hope is the bird with its dim sensations;…”

‘Advent,’ second stanza, in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg #16950. ‘The watch is long betimes and late, / The prize is slow to win’ belongs to Rossetti's explicitly Christian devotional waiting; later stanzas name Christ and Jesus Christ directly. It is devotional poetry rather than a secular guarantee that persistence produces a reward.

Letter 78 uses the language of struggle while discussing Seneca’s own experiences of illness and endurance.

Opening of The American Crisis No. I; Paine addresses perseverance during a difficult stage of the American Revolution.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 595, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).

Final line of Ode to the West Wind; the changing seasons become a metaphor for historical and personal renewal.

Meditations, Book IV; George Long translation, in the reflection on meeting misfortune without being crushed by it.