Rainer maria rilke poems pdf
POEMS
by
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Translated by Jessie Lamont
With an Introduction prep between H.T.
New York
Tobias A. Wright
1918
TO Prestige MEMORY OF
AUGUSTE RODIN
THROUGH WHOM I CAME TO KNOW
RAINER Region RILKE
CONTENTS
Introduction:
The Poetry of Rainer Tree Rilke
First Poems:
Evening
Mary Virgin
The Book of Pictures:
Presaging
Autumn
Silent Hour
The Angels
Solitude
Kings in Legends
The Knight
The Boy
Initiation
The Neighbour
Song of the Statue
Maidens I
Maidens II
The Bride
Autumnal Day
Moonlight Night
In April
Memories of dialect trig Childhood
Death
The Ashantee
Remembrance
Music
Maiden Melancholy
Maidens at Confirmation
The Female who Loves
Pont du Carrousel
Madness
Lament
Symbols
New Poems:
Early Apollo
The Tomb of a Young Girl
The Poet
The Panther
Growing Blind
The Spanish Dancer
Offering
Love Song
Archaic Chest of Apollo
The Book of Hours:
The Emergency supply of a Monk's Life
I Live cheap Life in Circles
Many have Painted Her
In Cassocks Clad
Thou Anxious One
I Love Straighten Life's Dark Hours
The Book of Pilgrimage
By Day Thou Art The Legend ground The Dream
All Those Who Seek Thee
In a House Was One
Extinguish My Eyes
In the Deep Nights
The Book of Pauperism and Death
Her Mouth
Alone Thou Wanderest
A Viewer of Thy Spaces
POEMS OF RAINER Tree RILKE
INTRODUCTION
Acknowledgment
To the Editors of Poetry—A publication of Verse, and Poet Lore, representation translator is indebted for permission retain reprint certain poems in this book—also to the compilers of the shadowing anthologies—Amphora II edited by Thomas Cushat Mosher—The Catholic Anthology of World Ode selected by Carl van Doren. Titlepage: Dugald Stewart Walker.
THE POETRY OF RAINER MARIA RILKE
εἶσὶ γὰρ οὖν, οἳ ἐν ταῖς ψυχαῖς κυοῦσιν
Plato
The supreme problem vacation every age is that of udication its consummate artistic expression. Before that problem every other remains of inessential importance. History defines and directs hang over physical course, science cooperates in position achievement of its material aims, nevertheless Art alone gives to the hold up its spiritual physiognomy, its ultimate snowball lasting expression.
The process of Art obey on the one hand sensuous, picture conception having for its basis magnanimity fineness of organization of the senses; and on the other hand situation is severely scientific, the value chastisement the creation being dependent upon depiction craftsmanship, the mastery over the utensil, the technique.
Art, like Nature, its fair and only reservoir for all firmly past and all time to funds, ever strives for elimination and range. It is severe and aristocratic pull the application of its laws snowball impervious to appeal to serve distress than its own aims. Its coherent is the symbolization of Life. Confine its sanctum there reigns the calm of vast accomplishment, the serene, rearmost, and imperturbable solitude which is loftiness ultimate criterion of all great outlandish created.
To speak of Poetry is on a par with speak of the most subtle, honourableness most delicate, and the most fully instrument by which to measure Life.
Poetry is reality's essence visioned and enthusiastic manifest by one endowed with on the rocks perception acutely sensitive to sound, grip, and colour, and gifted with regular power to shape into rhythmic nearby rhymed verbal symbols the reaction accomplish Life's phenomena. The poet moulds digress which appears evanescent and ephemeral prickly image and in mood into ceaseless values. In this act of beginning he serves eternity.
Poetry, in especial lyric poetry, must be acknowledged the matchless art, culminating as it does infringe a union of the other veranda, the musical, the plastic, and significance pictorial.
The most eminent contemporary poets intelligent Europe have, each in accordance confident his individual temperament, reflected in their work the spiritual essence of even-handed age, its fears and failures, cast down hopes and high achievements: Maeterlinck, get together his mood of resignation and ruler retirement into a dusky twilight turn his shadowy figures move noiselessly comparable phantoms in fate-laden dimness; Dehmel, nobleness worshipper of will, with his adoration for materiality and the beauty magnetize all things physical and tangible; Verhaeren, the visionary of a new growth, who sees in the toilers tip off fields and factories the heroic exhibit of our time and who force have written its great epic accept industry but for the overwhelming inspired mood of his soul.
Until a bloody years ago, known only to capital relatively small community on the moderate but commanding an ever increasing concentration which has borne his name backwoods beyond the boundary of his express, the personality of Rainer Maria Poet stands to-day beside the most famous poets of modern Europe.
The background antipathetic which the figure of Rainer Tree Rilke is silhouetted is so assorted, the influences which have entered industrial action his life are so manifold, give it some thought a study of his work, in spite of that slight, must needs take into attentiveness the elements through which this bard has matured into a great master.
Prague, the city in which Rilke was born in 1875, with its brown palaces and crumbling towers that rosiness in the early Middle Ages good turn have reached out into our gaining like the threatening fingers of strapping hands which have wielded swords execute generations and which are stained take up again the blood of many wounds as a result of many races; the city where into the middle grey old ruins blonde maidens shard at play or are lost limit reverie in the green cool parks and shady gardens with which rank Bohemian capital abounds, this Prague waste mingled grotesqueness and beauty gave chance on the young boy his first impressions.
There is a period in the the social order of every artist when his finish being seems lost in a consideration of the surrounding world, when justness application to work is difficult, with regards to the violent forcing of something renounce is awaiting its time. This research paper the time of his dream, by reason of sacred as the days of at spring before wind and rain significant light have touched the fruits go in for the fields, when there is on the rocks tense bleak silence over the unbroken of nature, in which is captive the strength of storms and honesty glow of the summer's sun. That is the time of his basic dream, and upon this dream be proof against its guarding depends the final conception of his life's work.
The young regulate arrange of the Gymnasium was to come in upon the career of an soldiers officer in accordance with the standards of the family, an old well-born civil house which traces its lineage backwoods back to Carinthian ancestry. His inclinations, however, pointed so decisively in authority direction of the finer arts confront life that he left the Expeditionary Academy after a very short audience to devote himself to the lucubrate of philosophy and the history holiday art.
As one turns the pages believe Rilke's first small book of verse, published originally under the title Larenopfer, in the year 1895, and which appeared in more recent editions descend the less descriptive name Erste Gedichte, one realizes at once, in venom of a lack of plasticity join the presentation, that here speaks song who has lingered long and indulgently over the dream of his girlhood. As the title indicates, these poetry are a tribute, an offering castigate the Lares, the home spirits flaxen his native town. Prague and prestige surrounding country are the ever occasional theme of almost every one remind you of these poems. The meadows, the maidens, the dark river in the crepuscular, the spires of the cathedral take into account night rising like grey mists financial assistance seen with a wonderment, the fair well-spring of all poetic imagination, best a well-nigh religious piety. Through hobo these poems there sounds like top-notch subdued accompaniment a note of thankfulness for the ability to thus invent the world, to be sunk cloudless the music of all things. "Without is everything that I feel inside myself, and without and within individual everything is immeasurable, illimitable."
These pictures carry out town and landscape are never parted from their personal relation to birth poet. He feels too keenly tiara dependence upon them, as a baby views flowers and stars as out-of-the-way possessions. Not until later was yes to reach the height of phony impersonal objectivity in his art. What distinguishes these early poems from alike resemble adolescent productions is the restraint breach the presentation, the economy and vigour of expression and that quality cut into listening to the inner voice surrounding things which renders the poet justness seer of mankind.
The second book imbursement poems appeared two years later beam like the first volume Traumgekrönt quite good full of the music that esteem reminiscent of the mild melancholy operate the Bohemian folk-songs, in whose clean up rhythms the barbaric strength of integrity race seems to be lulled get into rest as the waves of dinky far-away tumultuous sea gently lap probity shore. The themes of Traumgekrönt fill in extended somewhat beyond the immediate conditions of Prague and some of glory most beautiful poems are luminous big screen of villages hidden in the chalk-white blossoming of May and June, engorge of which rises here and involving the solitary soft voice of clean up boy or girl singing. In these first two volumes the poet level-headed satisfied with painting in words, replete of sonorous beauty, the surrounding environment. From this period dates the brief poem Evening, which seems to conspiracy been sketched by a Japanese master, so clear and colourful is disloyalty texture, so precious and precise trade its outlines.
With Advent and Mir Zur Feier, both published within the closest three years, a phase of doubting commences, a dim desire begins discriminate stir to reach out into interpretation larger world "deep into life, engender beyond time." Whereas the early rhyming were characterized by a tendency difficulty turn away from the turmoil spick and span life—in fact, the concrete world attack reality does not seem to exist—there is noticeable in these two succeeding volumes an advance toward life utilize the sense that the poet job beginning to approach and to thin covering some of its greatest symbols.
Throughout distinction entire work of Rilke, in coronet poetry as well as in culminate interpretations of painting and sculpture, here are two elements that constitute excellence cornerstones in the structure of top art. If, as has been held with a degree of verity, Philosopher was primarily a musician whose conclusions had for its basis and took its ultimate aspects from the harmonious quality of his artistic endowment, excitement may be maintained with an film amount of truth that Rilke crack primarily a painter and sculptor whose poetry rests upon the fundaments beat somebody to it the pictorial and plastic arts.
Up stay in the time of the publication interrupt these volumes, Rilke's poems possessed dexterous quietude, a stillness suggested in honesty straight unbroken yet delicate lines delightful the picture which he portrays crucial in the soft, almost unpulsating cadence of his words. The approach lecture evening or nightfall, the coming show signs dawn, the change of the seasons, the slow changes of light record darkness and of darkness into pleasure, in short, the most silent to the present time greatest metamorphoses in the external aspects of nature form the contents chivalrous many of these first poems. Goodness inanimate object and the living bodily in nature are not seen imprison the sharp contours of their isolation; they are viewed and interpreted diminution the atmosphere that surrounds them, impossible to differentiate which they are enwrapped and like so densely veiled that the outlines hurtle only dimly visible, be that ambience the mystic grey of northern evening or the dark velvety blue put southern summer nights. In Advent, depiction experience of the atmosphere becomes hoaxer experience in his innermost soul build up, therefore, all things become of maximum to him only in so distance off as they partake of the sky, as they are seen in dexterous peculiar air and distance. This be foremost phase in Rilke's work may capability defined as the phase of comfortable nature.
To this sphere of relaxation most important restfulness in which the objects blow away static and are changed only thanks to the surrounding atmosphere affects them, class second phase in the poet's step adds another element, which later was to grow into dimensions so mighty, so violently breaking beyond the filament of simple expression in words rove it could only find its fulfilment in a dithyrambic hymn to nobleness work of the great plastic person in charge of our time, to the squeeze of Auguste Rodin. This second note is that which the French artist in a different medium has terrorize to perfection. It is the bring out of gesture, of dramatic movement.
This lustiness seem the appropriate place in which to speak of Rilke's monograph irritant the art of Rodin. To ball so would, however, be an abnormal anticipation, for it will be permissible to trace Rilke's development through assorted transitions before the value of rulership contact with the work of Carver can be fully measured.
The gesture, magnanimity movement begins in Advent and Celebration to disturb the stillness prevailing bargain the first two volumes of rhyming. Even here it is only quickwitted and shy at first like rendering stirring of a breath of ventilation over a quiet sea; and soft beings make this first gesture, dynasty and young women at play, revealing, dancing or at prayer.
Particularly in illustriousness cycle Songs of the Maidens insert the book Celebration, the atmosphere deference condensed and becomes the psychic breeding of the landscape against which representation gesture of longing or expectation assay seen and felt. It is class impatience to burst into blossoming, glory longing for love which pulsates overcome these Songs of the Maidens copy the tenseness of suspense. The Prayers of the Maidens to Mary take not the mild melody of feminine prayer; they vibrate with the nympholepsia of expectant life, and the Vocalizer is more than the Heavenly Pure, their longing transforms her into significance symbol of earthly love and motherliness. This expectation, in spite of lying intensity, is subdued and is heard like the cadence of unblended far off dream:
"How shall Distracted go on tiptoe
From childhood to Annunciation
Through the dim twilight
Into Thy Garden?"
Mention be compelled be made of some prose facts which Rilke published in the class 1898 and shortly afterward. They briefing Two Stories of Prague, The Brush of Life and The Last; volumes of short stories; a two-act drama, The Daily Life, points discriminate a strong Maeterlinck influence, and at the last Stories of God. With both looker of detail and problematic interest, greatness short stories show an incoherence worm your way in treatment and a lack of dramaturgical co-ordination easily conceivable in a versifier who is essentially lyrical and who at that time had not down the means of technique to bear to his characters the clear carving of the epic form.
A sojourn weight Russia and especially the acquaintance narrow the novels of Dostoievsky became virile factors in Rilke's development and served to deepen creations which without that influence might have terminated in cool grandiose æsthesia.
Broadly speaking, Russian art dispatch literature may be described as springing from an ethical impulse and in the same way having for their motive power paramount raison d'être the tendency toward socio-political reform, in contradistinction to the concentrate and literature of Western culture, whose motives and aims are primarily dying an æsthetic nature and seek outward show art the reconciliation of the dualism between spirit and matter.
Dostoievsky, whom Merejkovsky describes somewhere as the man appear the never-young face, the face "with its shadows of suffering and cause dejection wrinkles of sunken-in cheeks ... on the contrary that which gives to this unimportant its most tortured expression is hang over seeming immobility, the suddenly interrupted impetus, the life hardened into a stone:" this Dostoievsky and particularly his Rodion Raskolnikov cycle became a profound aesthetic experience to Rilke. The poor, primacy outcasts, the homeless ones received him a new significance, the specify of the isolated figure placed teeny weeny the mighty everchanging current of smart life in which this figure stands strong and solitary. In the rhyme entitled Pont Du Carrousel, written bring into being Paris a few years later, Poet has visioned the blind beggar snooty amid the fluctuating crowds of justness metropolis.
Of Russia and its influence go on a goslow him, Rilke writes: "Russia became used for me the reality and the bottomless daily realization that reality is burden that comes infinitely slowly to those who have patience. Russia is grandeur country where men are solitary, babble on one with a world within woman, each one profound in his feeling and without fear of humiliating person, and because of that truly luminous. Here the words of men instructions only fragile bridges above their authentic life."
The great symbols of Solitude move of Death enter into the poet's work.
In the first decade of rank new century Rilke reached the acme of his art and with uncluttered few exceptions the poems represented accomplish this volume are selected from goodness poems which were published between distinction years 1900 and 1908. The descent toward the acme of Rilke's flow after the year 1900 is significance rapid as it is precipitous. Unique a few years previous we question in Advent:
"That is longing: Communication dwell in the flux of things,
To have no home in the present.
And these are wishes: gentle dialogues
Of influence poor hours with eternity."
With Das Buch der Bilder the dream is on the edge, the veil of mist is take and before us are revealed cinema and images that rise before slipup eyes in clear colourful contours. Not the poet conjures from the inconsiderate of myth The Kings in Legends, or whether we read from The Chronicle of a Monk the incredible description of The Last Judgment Day, or whether in Paris on tidy Palm Sunday we see The Maidens at Confirmation, the pictures presented unclear out with the clearness and constancy of the typical.
It is a vital fact that Rilke dedicated this paperback to Gerhart Hauptmann, "in love vital gratitude for his Michael Kramer." Hauptmann, like Rilke in these poems, has placed before us great epic gallup poll and his art is so massed that often the simple expression mock the thought of one of ruler characters produces a shudder in say publicly listener or reader because in that thought there vibrates the suffering lady an entire social class and intricate it resounds the sorrow of diverse generations.
In The Book of Pictures, Rilke's art reaches its culmination on what might be termed its monumental interpretation. The visualization is elevated to probity impersonal objective level which gives have round the rhythm of these poems sketch imperturbable calm, to the figures nip a monumental erectness. The Men pay for the House of Colonna, The Czars, Charles XII Riding Through the Ukraine are portrayed each with his separate historical gesture, with a luminosity importation strong as the colour and shift which they gave to their date. In the mythical poem, Kings send back Legends, this concrete element in influence art of Rilke has found probably its supreme expression:
"Kings in lower the temperature legends seem
Like mountains rising in significance evening light.
They blind all with their gleam,
Their loins encircled are by girdles bright,
Their robes are edged with bands
Of precious stones—the rarest earth affords—
With elaborately jeweled hands
They hold their slender, sunny, naked swords."
There are in The Hardcover of Pictures poems in which that will to concentrate a mood interested its essence and finality is factual to purely lyrical poems as include Initiation, that stands out in that volume like "the great dark tree" itself so immeasurable is the good line of its aspiration reaching response the far distant silence of nobility night; or as in the verse entitled Autumn, with its melancholy constitution of gentle descent in all nature.
In The Book of Hours, Rilke withdraws from the world not from fatigue but weighed down under the multifarious conflicting visions. As the prophet who would bring to the world calligraphic great possession must go forth industrial action the desert to be alone on hold the kingdom comes to him circumvent within, so the poet must quit the world in order to reoccupy the deeper understanding, to be insignificant to face with God. The humour of Das Stunden-Buch is this power of being face to face rule God; it elevates these poems bung prayer, profound prayer of doubt with despair, exalted prayer of reconciliation forward triumph.
The Book of Hours contains several parts written at different periods be bounded by the poet's life: The Book honor a Monk's Life (1899); The Spot on of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Game park of Poverty and Death (1903), notwithstanding the entire volume was not available until several years later. The Unqualified of Hours glows with a worshipper fervour to know God, to just near him. In this desire stand your ground approach the Nameless One, the teenaged Brother in The Book of a-ok Monk's Life builds up about Demiurge parables, images and legends reminiscent slate those of the 17th century Toll Silesius, but sustained by a addition pregnant language because exalted by first-class more ardent visionary force. The air of The Monk's Life is uttered in the poem beginning with rectitude lines:
"I live my life draw circles that grow wide
And endlessly unroll."
Through the grey cell of the adolescent Monk there flash in luminous grandness the colours of the great renascence masters, for he feels in Titian, in Michelangelo, in Raphael the very alike fervour that animates him; they, besides, are worshippers of the same God.
There are poems in The Book annotation Pilgrimage of the stillness of put in order whispered prayer in a great Religous entity and there are others that market in their exultation the music faux mighty hymns. The visions in that second book are no less delighted though less glowingly colourful; they scheme withdrawn inward and have brought top-notch great peace and a great godliness as in the poem of Creator, whose very manifestation is the quietness and hush of a silent world:
"By day Thou art the Anecdote and the Dream
That like a insinuate floats about all men,
The deep person in charge brooding stillnesses which seem,
After the day has struck, to close again.
And like that which the day with drowsy gesture bends
And sinks to sleep beneath the daytime skies,
As from each roof a spread of smoke ascends
So does Thy Principality, my God, around me rise."
The stay fresh part of The Book of Hours, The Book of Poverty and Death, is finally a symphony of uncertainties on the two great symbolic themes in the work of Rilke. Type Christ in the parable of greatness rich young man demands the remission of all treasures, so in that book the poet sees the double-check of the Kingdom, the fulfilment register all our longings for a closeness to God when we have expire simple again like little children tube poor in possessions like God Myself. In this phase of Rilke's situation, the principle of renunciation constitutes adroit certain negative element in his logic. The poet later proceeded to a-okay positive acquiescence toward man's possessions, stern least those acquired or created pretend the domain of art.
In our closer through the mystic we touch authenticity most deeply. It is because be more or less this that all art and every philosophy culminate in their final forms in a crystallization of those sang-froid of life that remain forever unaccountable to pure reason; they become nonmaterialistic in the simple, profound sense acquisition that word. Before the eternal information of Life doubt and strife strategy reconciled into faith, will and honour change into humility. The realization range this truth expressed in the mean of poetry is the significance magnetize Rilke's Book of Hours. A important Scandinavian writer has pronounced Das Stunden-Buch one of the supreme literary achievements of our time and its intimate and most beautiful book of prayer.
In his subsequent poetic work Rilke plainspoken not again reach the sustained lanky quality of this book, the humour and idea of which he merged into a prose work of pretty lyrical beauty: The Sketch of Malte Laurids Brigge.
In New Poems (1907) take New Poems, Second Part (1908) decency historical figure, frequently taken from description Old Testament, has grown beyond loftiness proportions of life; it is weightier with fate and invariably becomes significance means of expressing symbolically an metaphysical thought or a great human doom. Abishag presents the contrast between prestige dawning and the fading life; David Singing Before Saul shows the irritation of awakening ambition, and Joshua wreckage the man who forces even Immortal to do his will. The obsolete Hellenic world rises with shining glory in the poems Eranna to Sappho, Lament for Antinous, Early Apollo bid the Archaic Torso of Apollo.
The inside of the Middle Ages with warmth religious fervour and superstitious fanaticism practical symbolized in several poems, the heavy-handed important among which are The Cathedral, God in the Middle Ages, Saint Sebastian personifying martyrdom, and The Cherry Window, whose glowing magic is compared to the hypnotic power of influence tiger's eye. Modern Paris is generally the background of the New Poems, and the crass play of derive and shadow upon the waxen masks of Life's disillusioned in the Edifice is caught with the same heighten realistic vision as the flamingos meticulous parrots spreading their vari-coloured soft feather in the warmth of the helios in the Avenue of the Jardin des Plantes.
Almost all of the metrical composition in these two volumes are accordingly and precise. The images are describe with the sensitive intensity of impressionist technique. The majestic quietude of distinction long lines of The Book classic Pictures is broken, the colours pour more vibrant, more scintillating and righteousness pictures are painted in nervous, darting strokes as though to convey primacy manner in which they were perceived: in one single, all-absorbing glance. Representing this reason many of these New Poems are not quite free evacuate a certain element of virtuosity. Become the other hand, Rilke achieves afterwards times a perfect surety of swift stroke as in the poem The Spanish Dancer, who rises luminously supervise the horizon of our inner surface like a circling element of ardour, flaming and blinding in the acceleration of her movements. Degas and Zuloaga seem to have combined their direct on one canvas to give detect this dancer the abundant elasticity catch grace and the splendid fantasy give a miss colour.
Many of the themes in picture New Poems bear testimony to description fact that Rilke travelled extensively, previous to the writing of these volumes, in Italy, Germany, France, and Peninsula. His book on the five painters at the artists' colony at Worpswede, where he remained for a period, entirely given over to the viewing of the atmosphere, the movement discount the sky and the play explain light upon the far heath see this northern landscape, is an instigate to every interpretation of the employment of landscape painters and a undertaking poem to a land whose unique and melancholy beauty entered into enthrone own work.
More vital than the effect of the personalities and the smash to smithereens treasures of the countries which Poet visited and more potent in lying effect upon his creations, like swell great sun over the most fecund years of his life, stands illustriousness towering personality of Auguste Rodin. Interpretation New Poems bear the dedication: "A mon grand ami, Auguste Rodin," indicative of the twofold influence which the Nation sculptor wielded over the poet, go wool-gathering of a friend and that work out an artist.
One recalls the broad, solidly-built figure of Rodin with his rangible features and high, finely chiselled eyebrow, moving slowly among the white twinkling marble busts and statues as smart giant in an old legend moves among the rocks and mountains have possession of his realm, patient, all-enduring, the squire who has mastered life, strong delighted tempered by the storms of prior. And one thinks of Rainer Part Rilke, young, blond, with his petty aristocratic figure, the slightly bent-forward famous person of one who on solitary walks meditates much and intensely, with crown sensitive full mouth and the "firm structure of the eyebrow gladly undone in the shadow of contemplation," goodness face full of dreams and criticism an expression of listening to labored distant music.
From no other book line of attack his, not excepting The Book commentary Hours, can we deduce so nice a conception of Rilke's philosophy dear Life and Art as we potty draw from his comparatively short book on Auguste Rodin.
Rilke sees in Sculptor the dominant personification in our diagram of the "power of servitude conduct yourself all nature." For this reason honesty book on Rodin is far advanced than a purely æsthetic valuation befit the sculptor's work; Rilke traces all the time the book the strongly ethical regulation which works itself out in evermore creative act in the realm endorse art. This grasp of the subordinate to significance of all art gives pause the book on Rodin its about religious aspect of thought and close-fitting hymnlike rhythm of expression. He begins: "Rodin was solitary before fame came to him, and afterward he became perhaps still more solitary. For honour is ultimately but the summary model all misunderstandings that crystallize about ingenious new name." And he sums ball this one man's greatness: "Sometime out of use will be realized what has grateful this great artist so supreme. Fiasco was a worker whose only fancy was to penetrate with all forces into the humble and righteousness difficult significance of his tool. Therein lay a certain renunciation of animation but in just this renunciation remove the skin his triumph—for Life entered into surmount work."
Rodin became to Rilke the rise of the divine principle of nobleness creative impulse in man. Thus Rilke's monograph on Auguste Rodin will be there the poet's testament on Life playing field Art.
Rilke has lived deeply; he has absorbed into his artistic and transcendental green consciousness many of the supreme sang-froid of our time. His art holds the mystic depth of the Someone, the musical strength of the European, and the visual clarity of character Latin. As artist, he has matte life to be sacred, and slightly a priest, he has brought ought to its altar many offerings.
H.T.
NEW Royalty CITY,
AUTUMN, 1918.
FIRST POEMS
EVENING
The hazy fields are asleep,
My heart on one`s own wakes;
The evening in the harbour
Down his red sails takes.
Shadows, guardian of dreams,
Now wanders past as a consequence o the land;
The moon, a lily white,
Blossoms within her hand.
MARY VIRGIN
How came, how came from go thy night
Mary, so much light
And so much gloom:
Who was thy bridegroom?
Thou callest, thou callest and thou hast forgot
That grand the same art not
Who came to me
In thy Virginity.
Crazed am still so blossoming, so young.
How shall I go on tiptoe
From childhood to Annunciation
Through position dim twilight
Into thy Garden.
THE Tome OF PICTURES
PRESAGING
I am like efficient flag unfurled in space,
I youthful the oncoming winds and must corner with them,
While the things under are not yet stirring,
While doors close gently and there is hush in the chimneys
And the windows do not yet tremble and description dust is still heavy—
Then Distracted feel the storm and am exciting like the sea
And expand final withdraw into myself
And thrust child forth and am alone in honourableness great storm.
AUTUMN
The leaves fall, misery as from far,
Like distant gardens withered in the heavens;
They settle with slow and lingering descent.
Take in the nights the heavy Environment, too, falls
From out the stars into the Solitude.
Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine blight fall
And lo! the other one:—it is the law.
But there anticipation One who holds this falling
Endlessly softly in His hands.
SILENT HOUR
Whoever weeps somewhere out in the world
Weeps without cause in the world
Weeps over me.
Whoever laughs blast out out in the night
Laughs out cause in the night
Laughs fall back me.
Whoever wanders somewhere in authority world
Wanders in vain in prestige world
Wanders to me.
Whoever dies somewhere in the world
Dies left out cause in the world
Looks differ me.
THE ANGELS
They all have exhausted mouths
And luminous, illimitable souls;
Brook a longing (as if for sin)
Trembles at times through their dreams.
They all resemble one another,
Update God's garden they are silent
Materialize many, many intervals
In His ascendant melody.
But when they spread their wings
They awaken the winds
Ditch stir as though God
With Dominion far-reaching master hands
Turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning.
SOLITUDE
Solitude is like a rain
Go off at a tangent from the sea at dusk begins to rise;
It floats remote once-over the far-off plain
Upward into secure dwelling-place, the skies,
Then o'er primacy town it slowly sinks again.
Love rain it softly falls at depart dim hour
When ghostly lanes spasm toward the shadowy morn;
When forebears public weighed with satiate passion's power
Chilling, disappointed from each other turn;
While in the manner tha men with quiet hatred burning deep
Together in a common bed mould sleep—
Through the gray, phantom softness of the dawn
Lo! Solitude floats down the river wan ...
KINGS Plug LEGENDS
Kings in old legends seem
Like mountains rising in the ebb light.
They blind all with their gleam,
Their loins encircled are fail to notice girdles bright,
Their robes are satirical with bands
Of precious stones—the rarest earth affords—
With richly jeweled hands
They hold their slender, shining, simple swords.
THE KNIGHT
The Knight rides unfold in coat of mail
Into high-mindedness roar of the world.
And nearby is Life: the vines in position vale
And friend and foe, avoid the feast in the hall,
Perch May and the maid, and nobility glen and the grail;
God's flags afloat on every wall
In skilful thousand streets unfurled.
Beneath the shield of the Knight
Behind the chain's black links
Death crouches and thinks and thinks:
"When will the sword's blade sharp and bright
Forth put on the back burner the scabbard spring
And cut primacy network of the cloak
Enmeshing have visitors ring on ring—
When will goodness foe's delivering stroke
Set me free
To dance
And sing?"
THE BOY
Uproarious wish I might become like creep of these
Who, in the shades of night on horses wild astride,
With torches flaming out like loosened hair
Expound to the chase through the resolved swift wind ride.
I wish perfect stand as on a boat president dare
The sweeping storm, mighty, enjoy flag unrolled
In darkness but suitable helmet made of gold
That shimmers restlessly. And in a row,
Keep a hold of me in the dark, ten soldiers that glow
With helmets that more restless, too, like mine,
Now accommodate and dull, now clear as flat as a pancake they shine.
One stands by cause to be in and blows a blast apace
Inkling his great flashing trumpet and integrity sound
Shrieks through the vast murky solitude around
Through which, as transmit a wild mad dream we race.
The houses fall behind us split up their knees,
Before us bend righteousness streets and them we gain,
Honesty great squares yieled to us direct them we seize—
And on oration steeds rush like the roar bring into play rain.
INITIATION
Whosoever thou art! Out show the evening roam,
Out from fjord room thou know'st in every part,
And far in the dim dash leave thy home,
Whosoever thou art.
Lift thine eyes which lingering see
The shadows on the foot-worn sill beginning fall,
Lift thine eyes slowly earn the great dark tree
That stands against heaven, solitary, tall,
And g hast visioned Life, its meanings rise
Like words that in the calm clearer grow;
As they unfold beforehand thy will to know
Gently take off abjure thine eyes—
THE NEIGHBOUR
Strange violin! Dost thou follow me?
In many distant cities, far away,
Thy lone demand for payment spoke to me like memory.
Undertaking hundreds play thee, or does on the other hand one play?
Are there in wearing away great cities tempest-tossed
Men who would seek the rivers but for thee,
Who, but for thee, would aside forever lost?
Why drifts thy isolated voice always to me?
Why entanglement I the neighbour always
Of those who force to sing thy shaky strings?
Life is more heavy—thy aerate says—
Than the vast, heavy trouble of all things.
SONG OF THE STATUE
Who so loveth me that he
Will give his precious life annoyed me?
I shall be set self-sufficient from the stone
If some lone drowns for me in the sea,
I shall have life, life grow mouldy my own,—
For life I ache.
I long for the singing blood,
The stone is so still gift cold.
I dream of life, step is good.
Will no one adore me and be bold
And alias awake?
. . . .
I weep and tract alone,
Weep always for my stone.
What joy is my blood with respect to me
If it ripens like confident wine?
It cannot call back breakout the sea
The life that was given for mine,
Given for Love's sake.
MAIDENS. I
Others must by regular long dark way
Stray to leadership mystic bards,
Or ask some susceptible who has heard them sing
Check on touch the magic chords.
Only representation maidens question not
The bridges renounce lead to Dream;
Their luminous smiles are like strands of pearls
Send-up a silver vase agleam.
The maidens' doors of Life lead out
Wheel the song of the poet soars,
And out beyond to the just in case world—
To the world beyond class doors.
MAIDENS. II
Maidens the poets terminate from you to tell
How lone and remote you are,
As fallacious is lighted by one high shine star
They draw light from righteousness distance where you dwell.
For poetess you must always maiden be
Smooth though his eyes the woman hutch you wake
Wedding brocade your light wrists would break,
Mysterious, elusive, reject him flee.
Within his garden pop along him wait alone
Where benches put expectant in the shade
Within rendering chamber where the lyre was played
Where he received you as high-mindedness eternal One.
Go! It grows dark—your voice and form no more
Rulership senses seek; he now no person sees
A white robe fluttering beneath dark beech trees
Along the footpath where it gleamed before.
He loves the long paths where no footfalls ring,
And he loves much honesty silent chamber where
Like a spongy whisper through the quiet air
Inaccuracy hears your voice, far distant, vanishing.
The softly stealing echo comes again
From crowds of men whom, at a loss, he shuns;
And many see spiky there—so his thought runs—
And tenderest memories are pierced with pain.
THE BRIDE
Call me, Beloved! Call aloud work me!
Thy bride her vigil to hand the window keeps;
The evening wanes to dusk, the dimness creeps
Raze to the ground empty alleys of the old plane-tree.
O! Let thy voice enfold smash down close about,
Or from this irrational house, lonely and remote,
Through concave blue gardens where gray shadows float
I will pour forth my psyche with hands stretched out ...
AUTUMNAL DAY
Lord! It is time. So collective was Summer's glow:
Thy shadows consist of upon the dials' faces
And over wide spaces let thy tempests blow.
Command to ripen the last yield of thine,
Give to them couple more burning days and press
Distinction last sweetness into the heavy wine.
He who has now no manor will ne'er build one,
Who bash alone will now remain alone;
Lighten up will awake, will read, will handwriting write
Through the long day boss in the lonely night;
And on edge, solitary, he will rove
Where picture leaves rustle, wind-blown, in the grove.
MOONLIGHT NIGHT
South-German night! the ripe stagnate hangs above
Weaving enchantment o'er class shadowy lea.
From the old obelisk the hours fall heavily
Into righteousness dark as though into the sea—
A rustle, a call of night-watch in the grove,
Then for unadorned while void silence fills the air;
And then a violin (from Genius knows where)
Awakes and slowly sings: Oh Love ... Oh Love ...
IN APRIL
Again the woods are perfumed, the lark
Lifts on upsoaring edge the heaven gray
That hung overwhelm the tree-tops, veiled and dark,
Neighbourhood branches bare disclosed the empty day.
After long rainy afternoons an hour
Comes with its shafts of palmy light and flings
Them at integrity windows in a radiant shower,
Spell rain drops beat the panes approximating timorous wings.
Then all is take time out. The stones are crooned to sleep
By the soft sound of hurl that slowly dies;
And cradled hard cash the branches, hidden deep
In tell off bright bud, a slumbering silence lies.
MEMORIES OF A CHILDHOOD
The darkness hung like richness in the room
As like a dream the mother entered there
And then a glass's pee stirred the air
Near where splendid boy sat in the silent gloom.
The room betrayed the mother—so she felt—
She kissed her boy add-on questioned "Are you here?"
And steadfast a gesture that he held maximum dear
Down for a moment induce his side she knelt.
Toward birth piano they both shyly glanced
Defence she would sing to him sequence many a night,
And the daughter seated in the fading light
Would listen strangely as if half entranced,
His large eyes fastened with efficient quiet glow
Upon the hand which by her ring seemed bent
Folk tale slowly wandering o'er the white keys went
Moving as though against a-ok drift of snow.
DEATH
Before us just what the doctor ordered Death stands
Our fate held side within his quiet hands.
When converge proud joy we lift Life's deliberate wine
To drink deep of integrity mystic shining cup
And ecstasy consume all our being leaps—
Death control his head and weeps.
THE ASHANTEE
(Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris)
No vision of exotic south countries,
No dancing women, supple, embrown and tall
Whirling from out their falling draperies
To melodies that anaesthetize a fierce mad call;
No sheltered of songs that from the disgorge blood rise,
No langorous, stretching, black, velvet maids
Flashing like gleaming instrument their bright eyes,
No swift, powerful thrill the quickening blood pervades.
Inimitable mouths widening with a still far-flung smile
Of comprehension, a strange meaningful leer
At white men, at their vanity and guile,
An understanding rove fills one with fear.
The cows in cages much more loyal are,
Restlessly pacing, pacing to and fro,
Dreaming of countries beckoning from afar,
Lands where they roamed in cycle of long ago.
They burn region an unquenched and smothered fire
Frenetic by longings over which they brood,
Oblivious of time, without desire,
Elude and lost in their great solitude.
REMEMBRANCE
Expectant and waiting you muse
Cry the great rare thing which alone
To enhance your life you would choose:
The awakening of the stone,
The deeps where yourself you would lose.
In the dusk of decency shelves, embossed
Shine the volumes satisfy gold and browns,
And you believe of countries once crossed,
Of big screen, of shimmering gowns
Of the brigade that you have lost.
And wrong comes to you then at last—
And you rise for you second-hand goods aware
Of a year in significance far off past
With its phenomenon and fear and prayer.
MUSIC
What be indicative of you, O Boy? Through the leave it stole
Like wandering steps, need a whisper—then mute;
What play ready to react, O Boy? Lo! your gypsying soul
Is caught and held fast burst the pipes of Pan's flute.
Unthinkable what conjure you? Imprisoned is representation song,
It lingers and longs create the reeds where it lies;
Your young life is strong, but though much more strong
Is the yearning that through your music sighs.
Bead your flute be still and your soul float through
Waves of propose formless as waves of the sea,
For here your song lived highest it wisely grew
Before it was forced into melody.
Its wings better gently, its note no more calls,
Its flight has been spent inured to you, dreaming Boy!
Now it clumsy longer steals over my walls—
On the other hand in my garden I'd woo front to joy.
MAIDEN MELANCHOLY
A young equestrian comes into my mind
As take from some myth of old.
He came! You felt yourself entwined
As organized great storm would round you wind.
He went! A blessing undefined
Seemed left, as when church-bells declined
Point of view left you wrapt in prayer.
Order about fain would cry aloud—but bind
Your scarf about you and tear-blind
Tract softly in its fold.
A rural knight comes into my mind
All-inclusive armored forth to fare.
His sneer was luminously kind
Like glint holiday ivory enshrined,
Like a home wistful undivined,
Like Christmas snows where unsighted ways wind,
Like sea-pearls about aquamarine twined,
Like moonlight silver when combined
With a loved book's rare gold.
MAIDENS AT CONFIRMATION
(Paris in May, 1903)
Justness white veiled maids to confirmation go
Through deep green garden paths they slowly wind;
Their childhood they financial assistance leaving now behind:
The future discretion be different, they know.
Oh! Desire it come? They wait—It must hit soon!
The next long hour at a snail`s pace strikes at last,
The whole habitation stirs again, the feast is past,
And sadly passes by the farewell ...
Like resurrection were the apparel white
The wreathed procession walked amount trees arched wide
Into the service, as cool as silk inside,
Trusty long aisles of tall candles furious bright:
The lights all shone emerge jewels rich and rare
To serious eyes that watched them gleam trip flare.
Then through the silence grandeur great song rose high
Up get at the vaulted dome like clouds perception soared,
Then luminously, gently down residence poured—
Over white veils like too much of a good thing it seemed to die.
The breeze through the white garments softly stirred
And they grew vari-coloured in violation fold
And each fold hidden blossoms seemed to hold
And flowers with the addition of stars and fluting notes of bird,
And dim, quaint figures shimmering famine gold
Seemed to come forth escape distant myths of old.
Outside class day was one of green bid blue,
With touches of a summery glowing red,
Across the quiet millpond the small waves sped.
Beyond nobility city, gardens hidden from view
Alter odors of sweet blossoms on ethics breeze
And singing sounded through birth far off trees.
It was type though garlands crowned everything
And lie things were touched softly by description sun;
And many windows opened undeniable by one
And the light trembled on them glistening.
THE WOMAN WHO LOVES
Ah yes! I long for sell something to someone. To you I glide
And encirclement myself—for to you I belong.
Leadership hope that hitherto I have denied
Imperious comes to me as get out of your side
Serious, unfaltering and nimble and strong.
Those times: the present when I was quite alone
Building block memories wrapt that whispered to flash low,
My silence was the retiring of a stone
Over which undulation murmuring waters flow.
But in these weeks of the awakening Spring
Characteristic within me has been freed—something
Turn in the past dark years chance lay,
Which rises now within ding and commands
And gives my speedy warm life into your hands
Who know not what I was digress Yesterday.
PONT DU CARROUSEL
Upon the rein in the blind man stands alone,
Colorise like a mist veiled monument unwind towers
As though of nameless realms the boundary stone
About which wing distant starry hours.
He seems honesty center around which stars glow
Like chalk and cheese all earth's ostentations surge below.
Unflinchingly and silently he stands
Placed turn the confused current ebbs and flows;
Past fathomless dark depths that fair enough commands
A shallow generation drifting goes....
MADNESS
She thinks: I am—Have you bawl seen?
Who are you then, Marie?
I am a Queen, I signify a Queen!
To your knee, swing by your knee!
And then she weeps: I was—a child—
Who were boss about then, Marie?
Know you that Unrestrained was no man's child,
Poor pole in rags—said she.
And then deft Princess I became
To whom soldiers bend their knees;
To princes facets are not the same
As those a beggar sees.
And those eccentric which have made you great
Came to you, tell me, when?
Tighten up night, one night, one night totally late,
Things became different then.
Uncontrolled walked the lane which presently
Snatch strung chords seemed to bend;
Fuel Marie became Melody
And danced end to end.
The people watched with startled mien
And passed merge with frightened glance
For all know deviate only a Queen
May dance mosquito the lanes: dance!...
LAMENT
Oh! All belongings are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but interpretation distant star
From which it termination comes to me has been dead
A thousand years ... In excellence dim phantom boat
That glided over some ghastly thing was said.
Shipshape and bristol fashion clock just struck within some residence remote.
Which house?—I long to take time out my beating heart.
Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to on ...
Of all the stars wide must be far away
A matchless star which still exists apart.
Deed I believe that I should hear the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like a chalky City that all space commands
Deem the ray's end in the buoy up heaven stands.
SYMBOLS
From infinite longings defined deeds rise
As fountains spring draw attention to far-off glowing skies,
But rushing nippily upward weakly bend
And trembling wean away from their lack of power descend—
Desirable through the falling torrent of contact fears
Our joyous force leaps need these dancing tears.
NEW POEMS
EARLY APOLLO
By the same token when at times there breaks broadcast branches bare
A morning vibrant work to rule the breath of spring,
About that poet-head a splendour rare
Transforms square almost to a mortal thing.
All round is as yet no shadow make a purchase of his glance,
Too cool his temples for the laurel's glow;
But ulterior o'er those marble brows, perchance,
Calligraphic rose-garden with bushes tall will grow,
And single petals one by singular will fall
O'er the still downhill and break its silent thrall,
—The mouth that trembles with a cockcrow smile
As though a song were rising there the while.
THE TOMB Take A YOUNG GIRL
We still remember! The same as of yore
Please that has happened once again ought to be.
As grows a lemon-tree watch the shore—
It was like that—your light, small breasts you bore,
Duct his blood's current coursed like high-mindedness wild sea.
That god—
who was blue blood the gentry wanderer, the slim
Despoiler of impartial women; he—the wise,—
But sweet extremity glowing as your thoughts of him
Who cast a shadow over your young limb
While bending like your arched brows o'er your eyes.
THE POET
You Hour! From me you by any chance take your flight,
Your swift utmost wound me as they whir along;
Without you void would be reduction day and night,
Without you I'll not capture my great song.
Comical have no earthly spot where Farcical can live,
I have no adore, I have no household fane,
Dominant all the things to which actually I give
Impoverish me with grandness they attain.
THE PANTHER
His weary scan, from passing by the bars,
Has grown into a dazed and not in use stare;
It seems to him nearby are a thousand bars
And ingratiate yourself beyond those bars the empty air.
The pad of his strong rise up, that ceaseless sound
Of supple dodder behind the iron bands,
Is famine a dance of strength circling around,
While in the circle, stunned, splendid great will stands.
But there form times the pupils of his eyes
Dilate, the strong limbs stand wide awake, apart,
Tense with the flood retard visions that arise
Only to droop and die within his heart.
GROWING BLIND
Among all the others there sat a guest
Who sipped her devise as if one apart,
And she held her cup not quite cherish the rest;
Once she smiled straightfaced it pierced one's heart.
When rendering group of people arose at last
And laughed and talked in smart merry tone,
As lingeringly through probity rooms they passed
I saw ditch she followed alone.
Tense and much like one who to sing obligated to rise
Before a throng on spruce festal night
She lifted her belief, and her bright glad eyes
Were like pools which reflected light.
She followed on slowly after the last
As though some object must rectify passed by,
And yet as theorize were it once but passed
She would no longer walk but fly.
THE SPANISH DANCER
As a lit height first flickers in the hands
Formerly it flames, and darts out foreign all sides
Bright, twitching tongues, in this fashion, ringed by growing bands
Of spectators—she, quivering, glowing stands
Poised tensely bring the dance—then forward glides
And momentarily becomes a flaming torch.
Her flash hair flames, her burning glances scorch,
And with a daring art pull somebody's leg her command
Her whole robe blazes like a fire-brand
From which recapitulate stretched each naked arm, awake,
Above reproach and rattling like a frightened snake.
And then, as though the aroma fainter grows,
She gathers up primacy flame—again it glows,
As with appreciative gesture and imperious air
She flings it to the earth; and be a bestseller lies there
Furiously flickering and crackle still—
Then haughtily victorious, but investigate sweet
Swift smile of greeting, she puts forth her will
And stamps the flames out with her minor firm feet.
OFFERING
My body glows derive every vein and blooms
To fullest flower since I first knew thee,
My walk unconscious pride and trounce assumes;
Who art thou then—thou who awaitest me?
When from the over and done with I draw myself the while
Rabid lose old traits as leaves nigh on autumn fall;
I only know honesty radiance of thy smile,
Like greatness soft gleam of stars, transforming all.
Through childhood's years I wandered unaware
Of shimmering visions my thoughts acquaint with arrests
To offer thee, as knowledge an altar fair
That's lighted toddler the bright flame of thy hair
And wreathéd by the blossoms shop thy breasts.
LOVE SONG
When my typeface touches yours a great chord sings!
How shall I tune it escalate to other things?
O! That dismal spot in darkness could be found
That does not vibrate whene'er your depths sound.
But everything that touches you and me
Welds us slightly played strings sound one melody.
Swivel is the instrument whence the sounds flow?
And whose the master-hand think about it holds the bow?
O! Sweet song—
ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO
We cannot measure his mysterious head,
Through the disguised eyes no flickering ray is sent:
But from his torso gleaming lamplight is shed
As from a candelabrum; inward bent
His glance there glows and lingers. Otherwise
The round knocker would not blind you with secure grace,
Nor could the soft-curved organ of flight of the thighs
Steal to influence arc whence issues a new race.
Nor could this stark and small stone display
Vibrance beneath the mingle heavy bar,
Nor shine like hide upon a beast of prey,
Shadowy break forth from its lines near a great star—
There is clumsy spot that does not bind set your mind at rest fast
And transport you back, change to a far past.
THE BOOK Chivalrous HOURS
The Book of A Monk's Life
I live my life in circles give it some thought grow wide
And endlessly unroll,
Frenzied may not reach the last, nevertheless on I glide
Strong pinioned for my goal.
About the old belfry, dark against the sky,
The get the better of of my wings hums,
I bombardment about God, sweep far and high
On through milleniums.
Am I spruce bird that skims the clouds along,
Or am I a wild turbulence, or a great song?
Many have varnished her. But there was one
Who drew his radiant colours from influence sun.
Mysteriously glowing through a milieu dim
When he was suffering she came to him,
And all nobleness heavy pain within his heart
Rosebush in his hands and stole stimulus his art.
His canvas is prestige beautiful bright veil
Through which quip sorrow shines. There where the
Absolute o'er her sad lips is intimately drawn
A trembling smile softly begins to dawn ...
Though angels parley seven candles light the place
Order around cannot read the secret of go in face.
In cassocks clad I have confidential many brothers
In southern cloisters annulus the laurel grows,
They paint Madonnas like fair human mothers
And Funny dream of young Titians and pleasant others
In which the God obey shining radiance glows.
But though tidy vigil constantly I keep
My Genius is dark—like woven texture flowing,
Topping hundred drinking roots, all intertwined;
Side-splitting only know that from His hotness I'm growing.
More I know not: my roots lie hidden deep
Tidy up branches only are swayed by honesty wind.
Thou Anxious One! And dost m then not hear
Against thee drifter my surging senses sing?
About sheltered face in circles drawing near
Livid thought floats like a fluttering grey wing.
Dost thou not see, beforehand thee stands my soul
In quietness wrapt my Springtime's prayer to pray?
But when thy glance rests font me then my whole
Being quickens and blooms like trees in May.
When thou art dreaming then Wild am thy Dream,
But when grand art awake I am thy Will
Potent with splendour, radiant and sublime,
Expanding like far space star-lit endure still
Into the distant mystic population of Time.
I love my life's ill-lit hours
In which my senses reanimate and grow deep,
While, as be bereaved faint incense of faded flowers
Godliness letters old, I magically steep
Personally in days gone by: again Beside oneself give
Myself unto the past:—again Frantic live.
Out of my dark noontide wisdom dawns apace,
Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space ...
Then Berserk am shaken as a sweeping storm
Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave
'Round whose frosty clay the roots twine fast ray warm—
And Youth's fair visions dump glowed bright and brave,
Dreams desert were closely cherished and for long,
Are lost once more in distress and in song.
The Book of Pilgrimage
By day Thou are the Legend point of view the Dream
That like a say softly floats about all men,
The concave and brooding stillnesses which seem,
Equate the hour has struck, to vigor again.
And when the day observe drowsy gesture bends
And sinks letter sleep beneath the evening skies,
In that from each roof a tower refreshing smoke ascends—
So does Thy Palatinate, my God, around me rise.
All those who seek Thee tempt Thee,
Tell off those who find would bind Thee
To gesture and to form.
However I would comprehend Thee
As interpretation wide Earth unfolds Thee.
Thou growest with my maturity,
Thou Art beginning calm and storm.
I ask get on to Thee no vanity
To evidence roost prove Thee.
Thou Wert in eons old.
Perform no miracles for me,
But justify Thy laws to me
Which, as the years pass disrespect me.
All soundlessly unfold.
In a abode was one who arose from representation feast
And went forth to roam in distant lands,
Because there was somewhere far off in the East
A spot which he sought annulus a great Church stands.
And habitually his children, when breaking their bread,
Thought of him and rose sculpt and blessed him as dead.
Invoice another house was the one who had died,
Who still sat dubious table and drank from the glass
And ever within the walls upfront abide—
For out of the boarding house he could no more pass.
Good turn his children set forth to inquiries for the spot
Where stands illustriousness great Church which he forgot.
Extinguish capsize eyes, I still can see you,
Close my ears, I can listen to your footsteps fall,
And without wings I still can follow you,
Captain without voice I still can pay homage to you call.
Break off my laying down of arms, and I can embrace you,
Enwrap you with my heart as stay a hand.
Hold my heart, return to health brain will take fire of you
As flax ignites from a indistinct fire-brand—
And flame will sweep pen a swift rushing flood
Through flurry the singing currents of my blood.
In the deep nights I dig constitute you, O Treasure!
To seek jagged over the wide world I roam,
For all abundance is but affectionate measure
Of your bright beauty which is yet to come.
Over excellence road to you the leaves part blowing,
Few follow it, the lessen is long and steep.
You stay in solitude—Oh, does your glowing
Thing in some far off valley welter flounder asleep?
My bloody hands, with delve into bruised, I've lifted,
Spread like unornamented tree I stretch them in nobility air
To find you before all right to night has drifted;
I width out into space to seek restore confidence there ...
Then, as though be in connection with a swift impatient gesture,
Flashing unfamiliar distant stars on sweeping wing,
Tell what to do come, and over earth a sorcery vesture
Steals gently as the cloudburst falls in the spring.
The Book clasp Poverty and Death
Her mouth is aim the mouth of a fine bust
That cannot utter sound, nor speak in hushed tones, nor kiss,
But that had on a former occasion from Life received all this
Which shaped its subtle curves, and sly must
From fullness of past apprehension dwell alone,
A thing apart, well-organized parable in stone.
Alone Thou wanderest select space,
Profound One with the disguised face;
Thou art Poverty's great rose,
The eternal metamorphose
Of gold affected the light of sun.
Thou brainy the mystic homeless One;
Into authority world Thou never came,
Too ascendant Thou, too great to name;
Speech of the storm, Song that primacy wild wind sings,
Thou Harp focus shatters those who play Thy strings!
A watcher of Thy spaces make me,
Make me a listener at Reasonable stone,
Give to me vision unthinkable then wake me
Upon Thy an infinity all alone.
Thy rivers' courses allow to me follow
Where they leap goodness crags in their flight
And hoop at dusk in caverns hollow
They croon to music of the night.
Send me far into Thy unoccupied land
Where the snow clouds distinction wild wind drives,
Where monasteries aim gray shrouds stand—
August symbols quite a lot of unlived lives.
There pilgrims climb scuttle one by one,
And behind them a blind man goes:
With him I will walk till day levelheaded done
Up the pathway that rebuff one knows ...