Elegy Iv Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDECFE GHEEEIJEKKL EEMHNOPEQHRSTUCEVEW XYCHXGEGEEZ EA2EB2EC2KD2E2GF2G2H E2CH2QFI2CH REEEFEH2J2 K2L2M2EN2EM2CO2E2O trees of life oh what when winter comes | A |
We are not of one mind Are not like birds | B |
in unison migrating And overtaken | C |
overdue we thrust ourselves into the wind | D |
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds | E |
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one | C |
And somewhere lions roam quite unaware | F |
in their magnificence of any weaknesss | E |
- | |
But we while wholly concentrating on one thing | G |
already feel the pressure of another | H |
Hatred is our first response And lovers | E |
are they not forever invading one another's | E |
boundaries although they promised space | E |
hunting and homeland Then for a sketch | I |
drawn at a moment's impulse a ground of contrast | J |
is prepared painfully so that we may see | E |
For they are most exact with us We do not know | K |
the contours of our feelings We only know | K |
what shapes them from the outside | L |
- | |
Who has not sat afraid before his own heart's | E |
curtain It lifted and displayed the scenery | E |
of departure Easy to understand The well known | M |
garden swaying just a little Then came the dancer | H |
Not he Enough However lightly he pretends to move | N |
he is just disguised costumed an ordinary man | O |
who enters through the kitchen when coming home | P |
I will not have these half filled human masks | E |
better the puppet It at least is full | Q |
I will endure this well stuffed doll the wire | H |
the face that is nothing but appearance Here out front | R |
I wait Even if the lights go down and I am told | S |
There's nothing more to come even if | T |
the grayish drafts of emptiness come drifting down | U |
from the deserted stage even if not one | C |
of my now silent forebears sist beside me | E |
any longer not a woman not even a boy | V |
he with the brown and squinting eyes | E |
I'll still remain For one can always watch | W |
- | |
Am I not right You to whom life would taste | X |
so bitter Father after you for my sake | Y |
slipped of mine that first muddy infusion | C |
of my necessity You kept on tasting Father | H |
as I kept on growing troubled by the aftertaste | X |
of my so strange a future as you kept searching | G |
my unfocused gaze you who so often since | E |
you died have been afraid for my well being | G |
within my deepest hope relinquishing that calmness | E |
the realms of equanimity such as the dead possess | E |
for my so small fate Am I not right | Z |
- | |
And you my parents am I not right You who loved me | E |
for that small beginning of my love for you | A2 |
from which I always shyly turned away because | E |
the distance in your features grew changed | B2 |
even while I loved it into cosmic space | E |
where you no longer were and when I feel | C2 |
inclined to wait before the puppet stage no | K |
rather to stare at is so intensely that in the end | D2 |
to counter balance my searching gaze an angel | E2 |
has to come as an actor and begin manipulating | G |
the lifeless bodies of the puppets to perform | F2 |
Angel and puppet Now at last there is a play | G2 |
Then what we seperate can come together by our | H |
very presence And only then the entire cycle | E2 |
of our own life seasons is revealed and set in motion | C |
Above beyond us the angel plays Look | H2 |
must not the dying notice how unreal how full | Q |
of pretense is all that we accomplish here where | F |
nothing is to be itself O hours of childhood | I2 |
when behind each shape more that the past lay hidden | C |
when that which lay before us was not the future | H |
- | |
We grew of course and sometimes were impatient | R |
in growing up half for the sake of pleasing those | E |
with nothing left but their own grown upness | E |
Yet when alone we entertained ourselves | E |
with what alone endures we would stand there | F |
in the infinite space that spans the world and toys | E |
upon a place which from the first beginnniing | H2 |
had been prepared to serve a pure event | J2 |
- | |
Who shows a child just as it stands Who places him | K2 |
within his constellation with the measuring rod | L2 |
of distance in his hand Who makes his death | M2 |
from gray bread that grows hard or leaves | E |
it there inside his rounded mouth jagged as the core | N2 |
of a sweet apple The minds of murderers | E |
are easily comprehended But this to contain death | M2 |
the whole of death even before life has begun | C |
to hold it all so gently within oneself | O2 |
and not be angry that is indescribable | E2 |
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1)
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