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 Views
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 |
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"The Sonnets To Orpheus: I" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29734/the-sonnets-to-orpheus:-i>.
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