The Sonnets To Orpheus: I

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



A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.

Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,

but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,

a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
72

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXAX XAXA XXX BXB X
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 678
Words 120
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 3, 3, 1

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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