Elegy I Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIHJKLMNGHOPE QRQST UTVWHXYZA2B2TC2D2E2H F2EG2HRBH2B LHI2GJ2K2YL2M2 N2O2BP2Q2YR2S2T2ABQU 2V2W2X2 EEI2EY2Z2A3B3HC3QD3Y CE3XF3G3 EH3I3I3B3J3O2HB3HB3E H2EB3Who if I cried out would hear me among the angels' | A |
hierarchies and even if one of them suddenly | B |
pressed me against his heart I would perish | C |
in the embrace of his stronger existence | D |
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror | E |
which we are barely able to endure and are awed | F |
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us | G |
Each single angel is terrifying | H |
And so I force myself swallow and hold back | I |
the surging call of my dark sobbing | H |
Oh to whom can we turn for help | J |
Not angels not humans | K |
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel | L |
little secure and at home in our interpreted world | M |
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside | N |
daily for us to see yesterday's street remains for us | G |
stayed moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving | H |
Oh and the night the night when the wind | O |
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces | P |
Whom would it not remain for that longed after | E |
gently disenchanting night painfully there for the | Q |
solitary heart to achieve Is it easier for lovers | R |
Don't you know yet Fling out of your arms the | Q |
emptiness into the spaces we breath perhaps the birds | S |
will feel the expanded air in their more ferven flight | T |
- | |
Yes the springtime were in need of you Often a star | U |
waited for you to espy it and sense its light | T |
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past | V |
or as you walked below an open window | W |
a violin gave itself to your hearing | H |
All this was trust But could you manage it | X |
Were you not always distraught by expectation | Y |
as if all this were announcing the arrival | Z |
of a beloved Where would you find a place | A2 |
to hide her with all your great strange thoughts | B2 |
coming and going and often staying for the night | T |
When longing overcomes you sing of women in love | C2 |
for their famous passion is far from immortal enough | D2 |
Those whom you almost envy the abandoned and | E2 |
desolate ones whom you found so much more loving | H |
than those gratified Begin ever new again | F2 |
the praise you cannot attain remember | E |
the hero lives on and survives even his downfall | G2 |
was for him only a pretext for achieving | H |
his final birth But nature exhausted takes lovers | R |
back into itself as if such creative forces could never be | B |
achieved a second time | H2 |
Have you thought of Gaspara Stampa sufficiently | B |
- | |
that any girl abandoned by her lover may feel | L |
from that far intenser example of loving | H |
Ah might I become like her Should not their oldest | I2 |
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us | G |
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves | J2 |
from the beloved and quivering endured | K2 |
as the arrow endures the bow string's tension | Y |
and in this tense release becomes more than itself | L2 |
For staying is nowhere | M2 |
- | |
Voices voices Listen my heart as only saints | N2 |
have listened until the gigantic call lifted them | O2 |
clear off the ground Yet they went on impossibly | B |
kneeling completely unawares so intense was | P2 |
their listening Not that you could endure | Q2 |
the voice of God far from it But listen | Y |
to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message | R2 |
that forms itself out of silence They sweep | S2 |
toward you now from those who died young | T2 |
Whenever they entered a church in Rome or Naples | A |
did not their fate quietly speak to you as recently | B |
as the tablet did in Santa Maria Formosa | Q |
What do they want of me to quietly remove | U2 |
the appearance of suffered injustice that | V2 |
at times hinders a little their spirits from | W2 |
freely proceeding onward | X2 |
- | |
Of course it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer | E |
to no longer use skills on had barely time to acquire | E |
not to observe roses and other things that promised | I2 |
so much in terms of a human future no longer | E |
to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands | Y2 |
to even discard one's own name as easily as a child | Z2 |
abandons a broken toy | A3 |
Strange not to desire to continue wishing one's wishes | B3 |
Strange to notice all that was related fluttering | H |
so loosely in space And being dead is hard work | C3 |
and full of retrieving before one can gradually feel a | Q |
trace of eternity Yes but the liviing make | D3 |
the mistake of drawing too sharp a distinction | Y |
Angels they say are often unable to distinguish | C |
between moving among the living or the dead | E3 |
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along with it | X |
through both realms forever and their voices are lost in | F3 |
its thunderous roar | G3 |
- | |
In the end the early departed have no longer | E |
need of us One is gently weaned from things | H3 |
of this world as a child outgrows the need | I3 |
of its mother's breast But we who have need | I3 |
of those great mysteries we for whom grief is | B3 |
so often the source of spiritual growth | J3 |
could we exist without them | O2 |
Is the legend vain that tells of music's beginning | H |
in the midst of the mourning for Linos | B3 |
the daring first sounds of song piercing | H |
the barren numbness and how in that stunned space | B3 |
an almost godlike youth suddenly left forever | E |
and the emptiness felt for the first time | H2 |
those harmonious vibrations which now enrapture | E |
and comfort and help us | B3 |
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1)
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