Poems, passage 143

Oh! Will it come? They wait--It must come soon! The next long hour slowly strikes at last, The whole house stirs again, the feast is past, And sadly passes by the afternoon ...

Poems, passage 198

And when the day with drowsy gesture bends And sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies, As from each roof a tower of smoke ascends-- So does Thy Realm, my God, around me rise.

Poems, passage 23

There is a period in the life of every artist when his whole being seems lost in a contemplation of the surrounding world, when the application to work is difficult, like the violent forcing of something that is awaiting its time. This is the time of his dream, as sacred as the days of early spring before wind and rain and light have touched the fruits of the fields, when there is a tense bleak silence over the whole of nature, in which is wrapped the strength of storms and the glow of the summer's sun. This is the time of his deepest dream, and upon this dream and its guarding depends the final realization of his life's work.

Poems, passage 174

When the group of people arose at last And laughed and talked in a merry tone, As lingeringly through the rooms they passed I saw that she followed alone.

Poems, passage 166

We still remember! The same as of yore All that has happened once again must be. As grows a lemon-tree upon the shore-- It was like that--your light, small breasts you bore, And his blood's current coursed like the wild sea.

Poems, passage 108

Go! It grows dark--your voice and form no more His senses seek; he now no longer sees A white robe fluttering under dark beech trees Along the pathway where it gleamed before.

Poems, passage 118

After long rainy afternoons an hour Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings Them at the windows in a radiant shower, And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings.

Poems, passage 209

Then, as though with a swift impatient gesture, Flashing from distant stars on sweeping wing, You come, and over earth a magic vesture Steals gently as the rain falls in the spring.

Poems, passage 55

Through the grey cell of the young Monk there flash in luminous magnificence the colours of the great renaissance masters, for he feels in Titian, in Michelangelo, in Raphael the same fervour that animates him; they, too, are worshippers of the same God.

Poems, passage 145

Then through the silence the great song rose high Up to the vaulted dome like clouds it soared, Then luminously, gently down it poured-- Over white veils like rain it seemed to die.

Poems, passage 185

I live my life in circles that grow wide And endlessly unroll, I may not reach the last, but on I glide Strong pinioned toward my goal.

Poems, passage 179

And then, as though the fire fainter grows, She gathers up the flame--again it glows, As with proud gesture and imperious air She flings it to the earth; and it lies there Furiously flickering and crackling still-- Then haughtily victorious, but with sweet Swift smile of greeting, she puts forth her will And stamps the flames out with her small firm feet.

Poems, passage 81

And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls From out the stars into the Solitude.

Poems, passage 205

Extinguish my eyes, I still can see you, Close my ears, I can hear your footsteps fall, And without feet I still can follow you, And without voice I still can to you call. Break off my arms, and I can embrace you, Enfold you with my heart as with a hand. Hold my heart, my brain will take fire of you As flax ignites from a lit fire-brand-- And flame will sweep in a swift rushing flood Through all the singing currents of my blood.

Poems, passage 100

I long for the singing blood, The stone is so still and cold. I dream of life, life is good. Will no one love me and be bold And me awake?

Poems, passage 133

And it comes to you then at last-- And you rise for you are aware Of a year in the far off past With its wonder and fear and prayer.

Poems, passage 40

Dostoievsky, whom Merejkovsky describes somewhere as the man with the never-young face, the face "with its shadows of suffering and its wrinkles of sunken-in cheeks ... but that which gives to this face its most tortured expression is its seeming immobility, the suddenly interrupted impulse, the life hardened into a stone:" this Dostoievsky and particularly his _Rodion Raskolnikov_ cycle became a profound artistic experience to Rilke. The poor, the outcasts, the homeless ones received for him a new significance, the significance of the isolated figure placed in the mighty everchanging current of a life in which this figure stands strong and solitary. In the poem entitled _Pont Du Carrousel_, written in Paris a few years later, Rilke has visioned the blind beggar aloof amid the fluctuating crowds of the metropolis.

Poems, passage 142

The white veiled maids to confirmation go Through deep green garden paths they slowly wind; Their childhood they are leaving now behind: The future will be different, they know.

Poems, passage 186

About the old tower, dark against the sky, The beat of my wings hums, I circle about God, sweep far and high On through milleniums.

Poems, passage 41

Of Russia and its influence upon him, Rilke writes: "Russia became for me the reality and the deep daily realization that reality is something that comes infinitely slowly to those who have patience. Russia is the country where men are solitary, each one with a world within himself, each one profound in his humbleness and without fear of humiliating himself, and because of that truly pious. Here the words of men are only fragile bridges above their real life."

Poems, passage 184

We cannot fathom his mysterious head, Through the veiled eyes no flickering ray is sent: But from his torso gleaming light is shed As from a candelabrum; inward bent His glance there glows and lingers. Otherwise The round breast would not blind you with its grace, Nor could the soft-curved circle of the thighs Steal to the arc whence issues a new race. Nor could this stark and stunted stone display Vibrance beneath the shoulders heavy bar, Nor shine like fur upon a beast of prey, Nor break forth from its lines like a great star-- There is no spot that does not bind you fast And transport you back, back to a far past.

Poems, passage 106

For poet you must always maiden be Even though his eyes the woman in you wake Wedding brocade your fragile wrists would break, Mysterious, elusive, from him flee.

Poems, passage 18

The most eminent contemporary poets of Europe have, each in accordance with his individual temperament, reflected in their work the spiritual essence of our age, its fears and failures, its hopes and high achievements: Maeterlinck, with his mood of resignation and his retirement into a dusky twilight where his shadowy figures move noiselessly like phantoms in fate-laden dimness; Dehmel, the worshipper of will, with his passion for materiality and the beauty of all things physical and tangible; Verhaeren, the visionary of a new vitality, who sees in the toilers of fields and factories the heroic gesture of our time and who might have written its great epic of industry but for the overwhelming lyrical mood of his soul.

Poems, passage 170

His weary glance, from passing by the bars, Has grown into a dazed and vacant stare; It seems to him there are a thousand bars And out beyond those bars the empty air.

Poems, passage 165

And single petals one by one will fall O'er the still mouth and break its silent thrall, --The mouth that trembles with a dawning smile As though a song were rising there the while.

Poems, passage 54

"I live my life in circles that grow wide And endlessly unroll."

Poems, passage 72

* * * * *

Poems, passage 99

Who so loveth me that he Will give his precious life for me? I shall be set free from the stone If some one drowns for me in the sea, I shall have life, life of my own,-- For life I ache.

Poems, passage 26

These pictures of town and landscape are never separated from their personal relation to the poet. He feels too keenly his dependence upon them, as a child views flowers and stars as personal possessions. Not until later was he to reach the height of an impersonal objectivity in his art. What distinguishes these early poems from similar adolescent productions is the restraint in the presentation, the economy and intensity of expression and that quality of listening to the inner voice of things which renders the poet the seer of mankind.

Poems, passage 213

Thou art the mystic homeless One; Into the world Thou never came, Too mighty Thou, too great to name; Voice of the storm, Song that the wild wind sings, Thou Harp that shatters those who play Thy strings!

Poems, passage 76

How came, how came from out thy night Mary, so much light And so much gloom: Who was thy bridegroom?

Poems, passage 52

In _The Book of Hours_, Rilke withdraws from the world not from weariness but weighed down under the manifold conflicting visions. As the prophet who would bring to the world a great possession must go forth into the desert to be alone until the kingdom comes to him from within, so the poet must leave the world in order to gain the deeper understanding, to be face to face with God. The mood of _Das Stunden-Buch_ is this mood of being face to face with God; it elevates these poems to prayer, profound prayer of doubt and despair, exalted prayer of reconciliation and triumph.

Poems, passage 140

A young knight comes into my mind Full armored forth to fare.

Poems, passage 125

THE ASHANTEE (Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris)

Poems, passage 89

But when they spread their wings They awaken the winds That stir as though God With His far-reaching master hands Turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning.

Poems, passage 180

My body glows in every vein and blooms To fullest flower since I first knew thee, My walk unconscious pride and power assumes; Who art thou then--thou who awaitest me?

Poems, passage 149

Ah yes! I long for you. To you I glide And lose myself--for to you I belong. The hope that hitherto I have denied Imperious comes to me as from your side Serious, unfaltering and swift and strong.

Poems, passage 10

THE POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE

Poems, passage 101

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Poems, passage 105

Maidens the poets learn from you to tell How solitary and remote you are, As night is lighted by one high bright star They draw light from the distance where you dwell.

Poems, passage 154

Immovably and silently he stands Placed where the confused current ebbs and flows; Past fathomless dark depths that he commands A shallow generation drifting goes....

Poems, passage 28

With _Advent_ and _Mir Zur Feier_, both published within the following three years, a phase of questioning commences, a dim desire begins to stir to reach out into the larger world "deep into life, out beyond time." Whereas the early poems were characterized by a tendency to turn away from the turmoil of life--in fact, the concrete world of reality does not seem to exist--there is noticeable in these two later volumes an advance toward life in the sense that the poet is beginning to approach and to vision some of its greatest symbols.

Poems, passage 141

His smile was luminously kind Like glint of ivory enshrined, Like a home longing undivined, Like Christmas snows where dark ways wind, Like sea-pearls about turquoise twined, Like moonlight silver when combined With a loved book's rare gold.

Poems, passage 68

One recalls the broad, solidly-built figure of Rodin with his rugged features and high, finely chiselled forehead, moving slowly among the white glistening marble busts and statues as a giant in an old legend moves among the rocks and mountains of his realm, patient, all-enduring, the man who has mastered life, strong and tempered by the storms of time. And one thinks of Rainer Maria Rilke, young, blond, with his slender aristocratic figure, the slightly bent-forward figure of one who on solitary walks meditates much and intensely, with his sensitive full mouth and the "firm structure of the eyebrow gladly sunk in the shadow of contemplation," the face full of dreams and with an expression of listening to some distant music.

Poems, passage 98

Who, but for thee, would be forever lost? Why drifts thy lonely voice always to me? Why am I the neighbour always Of those who force to sing thy trembling strings? Life is more heavy--thy song says-- Than the vast, heavy burden of all things.

Poems, passage 110

The softly stealing echo comes again From crowds of men whom, wearily, he shuns; And many see you there--so his thought runs-- And tenderest memories are pierced with pain.

Poems, passage 158

And those things which have made you great Came to you, tell me, when? One night, one night, one night quite late, Things became different then.

Poems, passage 58

The last part of _The Book of Hours_, _The Book of Poverty and Death_, is finally a symphony of variations on the two great symbolic themes in the work of Rilke. As Christ in the parable of the rich young man demands the abandonment of all treasures, so in this book the poet sees the coming of the Kingdom, the fulfilment of all our longings for a nearness to God when we have become simple again like little children and poor in possessions like God Himself. In this phase of Rilke's development, the principle of renunciation constitutes a certain negative element in his philosophy. The poet later proceeded to a positive acquiescence toward man's possessions, at least those acquired or created in the domain of art.

Poems, passage 196

Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave 'Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm-- And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, Dreams that were closely cherished and for long, Are lost once more in sadness and in song.

Poems, passage 15

To speak of Poetry is to speak of the most subtle, the most delicate, and the most accurate instrument by which to measure Life.