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"We were together
Only a little while
And we believed our love
Would last a thousand years."

Yakamochi

I can't be the first to think Tennyson must have borrowed from this poem for the famous 'better to have loved and lost' portion of In Memoriam A.H.H. I think people all need this belief in the endurance of love -- we involuntarily cling to it, whether in eighth-century Japan, Victorian England, or here and now. A friend let me borrow this short collection, and for a couple of weeks I practically slept with it under my pillow. Perfectly austere. It's trimmed of superfluous language, and elegant in its depiction of loss, and how loss of love can hold as much beauty as love itself. Hats off to translator Kenneth Rexroth. I recommend it if you aren't necessarily inclined to read poetry but want to feel it, undiluted. Check it out!

Another favourite, however bitter:

"I may live on until
I long for this time
In which I am so unhappy,
And remember it fondly."

Fujiwara No Kiyosuke