Analysis of Night (O you whose countenance)
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Night. O you whose countenance, dissolved
in deepness, hovers above my face.
You who are the heaviest counterweight
to my astounding contemplation.
Night, that trembles as reflected in my eyes,
but in itself strong;
inexhaustible creation, dominant,
enduring beyond the earth's endurance;
Night, full of newly created stars that leave
trails of fire streaming from their seams
as they soar in inaudible adventure
through interstellar space:
how, overshadowed by your all-embracing vastness,
I appear minute!---
Yet, being one with the ever more darkening earth,
I dare to be in you.
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Scheme | XAXX XXXX XXXA XXXX X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111110001 01100111 111010010 11010010 1111010011 10011 00100010100 0100101100 11110010111 111010111 11100100010 10101 101011101010 10110 1101101011001 111101 0101101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 611 |
Words | 98 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 17 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 19 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 29 sec read
- 208 Views
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"Night (O you whose countenance)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29697/night-%28o-you-whose-countenance%29>.
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