Analysis of Sunset

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.


Scheme XXXX XXAX XAXX
Poetic Form
Metre 100110111110 11101011101 1101111111 11101101111 101110010110 1110011111110 1111010010111 111011101 101110100101001 111100101010 11011001101 110111010100101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 612
Words 115
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 40
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 162
Words per stanza (avg) 38
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

34 sec read
198

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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