Woman in Love

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



That is my window. Just now
I have so softly wakened.
I thought that I would float.
How far does my life reach,
and where does the night begin

I could think that everything
was still me all around;
transparent like a crystal's
depths, darkened, mute.

I could keep even the stars
within me; so immense
my heart seems to me; so willingly
it let him go again.

whom I began perhaps to love, perhaps to hold.
Like something strange, undreamt-of,
my fate now gazes at me.

For what, then, am I stretched out
beneath this endlessness,
exuding fragrance like a meadow,
swayed this way and that,

calling out and frightened
that someone will hear the call,
and destined to disappear
inside some other life.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

38 sec read
240

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAAXX XABA XXCX AXC ABAA AXXX
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 680
Words 127
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 3, 4, 4

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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