Vertically aligning the first letter of each line in a centering environment

Question

In a book project, I'm using centering to place verses in the center of the page. As expected, the text is laid out such that each line of the verse is centered. I would like to retain the centering for line #1 while forcing the first character of the line #2 to be vertically aligned with the first character of the line #1 of the verse. My MWE is below:
documentclass{book}
usepackage{fontspec}

newenvironment{myverse}
{nopagebreakcentering}

begin{document}
% Will replace period with unicode । and ॥ later
begin{myverse}
dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ . 
māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāścaiva kimakurvata sañjaya . 1-1.
end{myverse}

end{document}

In the output, I would like the first letter of line #2 i.e m to be placed directly below d - the first letter of line #1.
Is this possible? If centering is not the best environment, what can be done to get the desired layout?

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer

This is horizontal alignment, not vertical.
You want to left align the text block while centering the block as a whole, so here I use an l column in a centred tabular.

documentclass{book}
usepackage{fontspec}

newenvironment{myverse}
{begin{center}begin{tabular}{l}}
{end{tabular}end{center}}

begin{document}
% Will replace period with unicode । and ॥ later
begin{myverse}
dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ . 
māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāścaiva kimakurvata sañjaya . 1-1.
end{myverse}

end{document}

Peter Wilson · Answer

Try the verse package which lets you control many aspects of typesetting verses. Here is a revision of your MWE, for which thank you. % verseprob.tex SE 577265 documentclass{book} usepackage{fontspec} usepackage{comment} usepackage{verse} usepackage{lipsum} newlength{mylength} % just as a convenience newenvironment{myverse} {nopagebreakcentering} begin{document} begin{comment} % Will replace period with unicode । and ॥ later begin{myverse} dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ . māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāścaiva kimakurvata sañjaya . 1-1. end{myverse} end{comment} lipsum[1] % the length of a typical line settowidth{mylength}{dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ .} begin{verse}[mylength] dharmakṣetre kurukṣetre samavetā yuyutsavaḥ . māmakāḥ pāṇḍavāścaiva kimakurvata sañjaya . 1-1. end{verse} lipsum[2] end{document} With the verse package providing the optional length argument to begin{verse}[], where is the average length of the verse lines, then the verse lines will be typeset with the mid point of centered in the page.

Vertically aligning the first letter of each line in a centering environment

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