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Poems - Rainer Maria Rilke · Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them

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  Speaker 1: Introduction of poems. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Iva Davis.
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  Speaker 1: Poems by Renier Maria Rilka, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty two to nineteen forty seven. Introduction Ye see gar
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  Speaker 1: un e ntespsikis Gillosine Plato. The supreme problem of every
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  Speaker 1: age is that of finding its consummate artistic expression. Before
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  Speaker 1: this problem, every other remains of secondary importance. History defines
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  Speaker 1: and directs its physical course. Science cooperates in the achievement
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  Speaker 1: of its material aims, but art alone gives to the
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  Speaker 1: age its spiritual physiognomy, its ultimate and lasting expression. The
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  Speaker 1: process of art is, on the one hand, sensuous, the
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  Speaker 1: conception having for its basis the fineness of organization of
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  Speaker 1: the senses. And on the other hand, it is severely scientific,
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  Speaker 1: the value of the creation being dependent upon the craftsmanship,
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  Speaker 1: the mastery over the tool the technique. Art, like nature,
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  Speaker 1: its great and only reservoir for all time past and
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  Speaker 1: all time to come, ever, strives for elimination and selection.
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  Speaker 1: It is severe and aristocratic in the application of its laws,
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  Speaker 1: and impervious to appeal to serve other than its own aims.
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  Speaker 1: Its purpose is the symbolization of life. In its sanctum,
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  Speaker 1: there reigns the silence of vast accomplishment, the serene, final,
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  Speaker 1: and imperturbable solitude, which is the ultimate criterion of all
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  Speaker 1: great things created. To speak of poetry is to speak
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  Speaker 1: of the most subtle, the most delicate, and the most
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  Speaker 1: accurate instrument by which to measure life. Poetry is reality's essence,
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  Speaker 1: visioned and made manifest by one endowed with a perception
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  Speaker 1: acutely sensitive to sound, form and color, and gifted with
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  Speaker 1: the power to shape into rhythmic and rhymed verbal symbols
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  Speaker 1: the reaction to life's phenomena. The poet molds that which
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  Speaker 1: appears evanescent and ephemeral in image and in mood into
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  Speaker 1: everlasting values. In this act of creation, he serves eternity. Poetry,
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  Speaker 1: in especial lyrical poetry, must be acknowledged the supreme art,
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  Speaker 1: culminating as it does in the union of the other arts,
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  Speaker 1: the musical, the plastic, and the pictorial. The most eminent
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  Speaker 1: contemporary poets of Europe have each in accordance with his
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  Speaker 1: individual temperament reflected in their work, the spiritual essence of
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  Speaker 1: our age, its fears and failures, its hopes and high achievements.
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  Speaker 1: Materlink with his mood of resignation and his retirement into
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  Speaker 1: a dusky twilight, where his shadowy figures move noiselessly like
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  Speaker 1: phantoms in fate laden dimness. Demon, the worshiper of will,
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  Speaker 1: with his passion for materiality and the beauty of all
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  Speaker 1: things physical and tangible. Rharan, the visionary of a new vitality,
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  Speaker 1: who sees in the toilers of fields and factories the
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  Speaker 1: heroic gesture of our time, and who might have written
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  Speaker 1: its great epic of industry but for the overwhelming lyrical
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  Speaker 1: mood of his soul. Until a few years ago, known
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  Speaker 1: only to a relatively small community on the continent, but
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  Speaker 1: commanding an ever increasing attention which has borne his name
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  Speaker 1: far beyond the boundary of his country, the personality of
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  Speaker 1: Rainer Maria Rilka stands today beside the most illustrious poets
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  Speaker 1: of modern Europe. The background against which the figure of
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  Speaker 1: Rainer Maria Rilka is silhouetted is so varied. The influences
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  Speaker 1: which have entered into his life, are so manifold that
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  Speaker 1: a study of his work, however slight, must needs take
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  Speaker 1: into consideration the elements through which this poet has matured
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  Speaker 1: into a great master. Prague, the city in which Rilka
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  Speaker 1: was born in eighteen seventy five, with its sinister palaces
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  Speaker 1: and crumbling towers that rose in the early Middle Ages
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  Speaker 1: and have reached out into our time, like the threatening
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  Speaker 1: fingers of mighty hands, which have wielded swords for generations,
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  Speaker 1: and which are stained with the blood of many wounds
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  Speaker 1: of many races. The city where amid, gray, old ruins
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  Speaker 1: blond maidens are at play or are lost in reverie,
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  Speaker 1: in the green, cool parks and shady gardens with which
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  Speaker 1: the Bohemian capital abounds. This Prague, of mingled grotesqueness and
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  Speaker 1: beauty gave to the young boy his first impressions. There
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  Speaker 1: is a period in the life of every artist when
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  Speaker 1: his whole being seems lost in a contemplation of the
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  Speaker 1: surrounding world, when the application to work is difficult, like
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  Speaker 1: the violent forcing of something that is awaiting its time.
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  Speaker 1: This is the time of his dream, as sacred as
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  Speaker 1: the days of early spring, before wind and rain and
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  Speaker 1: light have touched the fruits of the fields. When there
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  Speaker 1: is a tense, bleak silence over the whole of nature
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  Speaker 1: in which is wrapped the strength of storms and the
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  Speaker 1: glow of the summer sun, this is the time of
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  Speaker 1: his deepest dream, and upon this stream and its guarding
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  Speaker 1: depends the final realization of his life's work. The young
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  Speaker 1: graduate of the Gymnasium was to enter upon the career
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  Speaker 1: of an army officer, in accordance with the traditions of
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  Speaker 1: the family, an old noble house which traces its lineage
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  Speaker 1: far back to Corinthian ancestry. His inclinations, however, pointed so
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  Speaker 1: decisively in the direction of the finer arts of life,
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  Speaker 1: that he left the military academy after a very short
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  Speaker 1: attendance to devote himself to the study of philosophy and
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  Speaker 1: the history of art. As one turns the pages of
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  Speaker 1: Rilka's first small book of poems, published originally under the
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  Speaker 1: title Larenopha in the year eighteen ninety five, and which
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  Speaker 1: appeared in more recent editions under the less descriptive name
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  Speaker 1: Erste Gadishte, one realizes at once, in spite of a
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  Speaker 1: lack of plasticity in the presentation that here speaks one
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  Speaker 1: who has lingered long and lovingly over the dream of
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  Speaker 1: his boyhood. As the title indicates, these poems are a tribute,
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  Speaker 1: an offering to the lares. The home spirits of his
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  Speaker 1: native town, Prague and the surrounding country are the ever
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  Speaker 1: recurring theme of almost every one of these poems. The meadows,
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  Speaker 1: the maidens, the dark river in the evening, the spires
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  Speaker 1: of the cathedral at night, rising like gray mists, are
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  Speaker 1: seen with a wonderment, the great well spring of all
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  Speaker 1: poetic imagination, with a wellnigh religious piety. Through all these poems,
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  Speaker 1: their selinunds like a subdued accompaniment, a note of gratitude
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  Speaker 1: for the ability to thus vision the world, to be
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  Speaker 1: sunk in the music of all things. Without is everything
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  Speaker 1: that I feel within myself, and without and within myself
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  Speaker 1: everything is immeasurable, illimitable. These pictures of town and landscape
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  Speaker 1: are never separated from their personal relation to the poet.
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  Speaker 1: He feels too keenly his dependence upon them, as a
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  Speaker 1: child views flowers and stars as personal possessions. Not until
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  Speaker 1: later was he to reach the height of an impersonal
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  Speaker 1: objectivity in his art. What distinguishes these early poems from
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  Speaker 1: similar adolescent productions is the restraint in the presentation, the
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  Speaker 1: economy and intensity of expression, and that quality of listening
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  Speaker 1: to the inner voice of things which renders the poet
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  Speaker 1: the seer of mankind. The second book of poems appeared
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  Speaker 1: two years later, and like the first volume, Tramga Krunth
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  Speaker 1: is full of the music that is reminiscent of the
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  Speaker 1: mild melancholy of the Bohemian folk songs, in whose gentle
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  Speaker 1: rhythms the barbaric strength of the race seems to be
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  Speaker 1: lulled to rest as the waves of a far away,
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  Speaker 1: tumultuous sea gently lap the shore. The themes of Tramca
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  Speaker 1: krunt are extended somewhat beyond the immediate environment of Prague,
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  Speaker 1: and some of the most beautiful poems are luminous pictures
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  Speaker 1: of villages hidden in the snowy blossoming of May and June,
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  Speaker 1: out of which rises here and there the solitary, soft
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  Speaker 1: voice of a boy or girl singing. In these first
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  Speaker 1: two volumes, the poet is satisfied with painting in words
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  Speaker 1: full of sonorous beauty. The surrounding world. From this period
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  Speaker 1: dates the small poem evening, which seems to have been
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  Speaker 1: sketched by a Japanese painter. So clear and colorful is
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  Speaker 1: its texture, so precious and precise are its outline. With
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  Speaker 1: Advent and mere Zoafaya, both published within the following three years,
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  Speaker 1: a phase of questioning commences. A dim desire begins to stir,
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  Speaker 1: to reach out into the larger world, deep into life,
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  Speaker 1: out beyond time. Whereas the early poems were characterized by
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  Speaker 1: a tendency to turn away from the turmoil of life,
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  Speaker 1: in fact the concrete world of reality does not seem
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  Speaker 1: to exist. There is noticeable in these two later volumes
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  Speaker 1: an advance toward life, in the sense that the poet
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  Speaker 1: is beginning to approach and to vision some of its
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  Speaker 1: greatest symbols. Throughout the entire work of Rilka, in his
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  Speaker 1: poetry as well as in his interpretations of painting and sculpture,
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  Speaker 1: there are two elements that constitute the cornerstones in the
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  Speaker 1: structure of his art if, as has been said with
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  Speaker 1: a degree of verity, Nietzsche was primarily a musician, whose
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  Speaker 1: philosophy had for its basis and took its old ti
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  Speaker 1: aspects from the musical quality of his artistic endowment. It
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  Speaker 1: may be maintained with an equal amount of truth that
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  Speaker 1: Rilka is primarily a painter and sculptor whose poetry rests
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  Speaker 1: upon the fundaments of the pictorial and plastic arts. Up
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  Speaker 1: to the time of the publication of these volumes, Rilka's
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  Speaker 1: poems possessed a quietude, a stillness, suggested in the straight,
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  Speaker 1: unbroken yet delicate lines of the picture which he betrays,
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  Speaker 1: and in the soft, almost unpulsating rhythm of his words.
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  Speaker 1: The approach of evening or nightfall, the coming of dawn,
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  Speaker 1: the change of the seasons, the slow change of light
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  Speaker 1: into darkness, and of darkness into light. In short, the
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  Speaker 1: most silent yet greatest metamorphoses in the external aspects of
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  Speaker 1: nature form the contents of many of these first poems.
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  Speaker 1: The inanimate object and the living creature in nature are
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  Speaker 1: not seen in the sharp contours of their isolation. They
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  Speaker 1: are viewed and interpreted in the atmosphere that surrounds them,
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  Speaker 1: in which they are enwrapped and so densely veiled that
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  Speaker 1: the outlines are only dimly visible. Be that atmosphere the
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  Speaker 1: mystic gray of northern twilight or the dark, velvety blue
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  Speaker 1: of southern summer, nights in advent, the experience of the
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  Speaker 1: atmosphere becomes an experience in his innermost soul, and therefore
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  Speaker 1: all things become of value to him only in so
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  Speaker 1: far as they partake of the atmosphere as they are
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  Speaker 1: seen in a peculiar air and distance. This first phase
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  Speaker 1: in Rilka's work may be defined as the phase of
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  Speaker 1: reposeful nature, to this sphere of relaxation and restfulness, in
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  Speaker 1: which the objects are static and are changed only as
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  Speaker 1: the surrounding atmosphere affects them. The second phase in the
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  Speaker 1: poet's development adds another element, which later was to grow
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  Speaker 1: into dimensions so powerful, so violently breaking beyond the limitations
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  Speaker 1: of simple expression, in words, that it could only find
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  Speaker 1: its satisfaction in a dithyrambic hymn to the work of
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  Speaker 1: the great plastic artist of our time, to the creations
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  Speaker 1: of August Rodan. This second element is that which the
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  Speaker 1: French sculptor, in the different medium has carried to perfection.
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  Speaker 1: It is the element of gesture, of dramatic movement. This
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  Speaker 1: might seem the appropriate place in which to speak of
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  Speaker 1: Rilka's monograph on the Art of Rodin. To do so would, however,
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  Speaker 1: be an undue anticipation, for it will be necessary to
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  Speaker 1: trace Rilka's development through several transitions before the value of
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  Speaker 1: his contact with the work of Rodin can be fully measured.
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  Speaker 1: The gesture the movement begins in Advent and Celebration to
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  Speaker 1: disturb the stillness prevailing in the first two volumes of poems.
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  Speaker 1: Even here it is only gentle and shy at first,
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  Speaker 1: like the stirring of a breath of wind over a
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  Speaker 1: quiet sea, and gentle beings make this first gesture. Children
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  Speaker 1: and young women at play, singing, dancing, or at prayer,
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  Speaker 1: particularly in the cycle Songs of the Maidens in the
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  Speaker 1: book Celebration, the atmosphere is condensed and becomes the psychic
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  Speaker 1: background of the landscape against which the gesture of longing
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  Speaker 1: or expectation is seen and felt. It is the impatience
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  Speaker 1: to burst into blossoming, the longing for love which pulsates
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  Speaker 1: in these songs of the Maidens with the tenseness of suspense.
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  Speaker 1: The prayers of the Maidens to Mary have not the
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  Speaker 1: mild melody of maidenly prayer. They vibrate with the ecstasy
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  Speaker 1: of expectant life, and the Madonna is more than the
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  Speaker 1: heavenly virgin. Their longing transforms her into the symbol of
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  Speaker 1: earthly love and motherhood. This expectation, in spite of its intensity,
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  Speaker 1: is subdued and is only heard like the cadence of
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  Speaker 1: a far dream. How shall I go on tiptoe from
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  Speaker 1: childhood to annunciation, through the dim twilight into thy garden?
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  Speaker 1: Mentions should be made of some prose writings which will
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  Speaker 1: co publish in the year eighteen ninety eight and shortly afterward.
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  Speaker 1: They are two stories of Prague, the Touch of Life,
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  Speaker 1: and the last three volumes of short stories, a two
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  Speaker 1: act drama, The Daily Life points to a strong major
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  Speaker 1: link influence, and finally stories of God with both beauty
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  Speaker 1: of detail and problematic interest. The short stories show an
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  Speaker 1: incoherence of treatment and a lack of dramatic coordination, easily
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  Speaker 1: conceivable in a poet who is essentially lyrical and who
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  Speaker 1: at that time had not mastered the means of technique
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  Speaker 1: to give to his characters. The clear chiseling of the
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  Speaker 1: epic form A sojourn in Russia, and especially the acquaintance
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  Speaker 1: with the novels of Dostoevsky, became potent fact in Rilka's
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  Speaker 1: development and serve to deepen creations which, without this influence
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  Speaker 1: might have terminated in a grandiose esthesia. Broadly speaking, Russian
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  Speaker 1: art and literature may be described as springing from an
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  Speaker 1: ethical impulse and as having for their motive power and
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  Speaker 1: raison d'etre the tendency towards socio political reform, in contradistinction
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  Speaker 1: to the art and literature of Western culture, whose motives
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  Speaker 1: and aims are primarily of an esthetic nature, and seek
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  Speaker 1: in art the reconciliation of the dualism between spirit and matter. Dostoevsky,
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  Speaker 1: whom Mershkuvski described somewhere as the man with the never
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  Speaker 1: young face, the face with its shadows of suffering and
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  Speaker 1: its wrinkles of sunken in cheeks. But that which gives
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  Speaker 1: to this face its most tortur and expression is its
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  Speaker 1: seeming immobility, the suddenly interrupted impulse, the life hardened into
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  Speaker 1: a stone. This, Dostoevsky, and particularly his Roodeon Raskolnikov cycle,
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  Speaker 1: became a profound artistic experience to Rilka, the poor, the outcasts,
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  Speaker 1: the homeless ones received for him a new significance, the
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  Speaker 1: significance of the isolated figure placed in the mighty, ever
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  Speaker 1: changing current of a life in which this figure stands
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  Speaker 1: strong and solitary. In the poem entitled pont de Carousel,
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  Speaker 1: written in Paris a few years later, Rilka has visioned
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  Speaker 1: the blind beggar aloof amid the fluctuating crowds of the
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  Speaker 1: metropolis of Russia and its influence upon him. Rilka writes,
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  Speaker 1: Russia became for me the reality and the deep daily
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  Speaker 1: realization that reality is something that comes infinitely slowly to
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  Speaker 1: those who have patience. Russia is the country where men
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  Speaker 1: are solitary, each one with the world within himself, each
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  Speaker 1: one profound in his humbleness and without fear of humiliating himself,
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  Speaker 1: And because of that truly pious. Here the words of
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  Speaker 1: men are only fragile bridges above their real life. The
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  Speaker 1: great symbols of solitude and death enter into the poet's work.
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  Speaker 1: In the first decade of the New century, Rilka reached
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  Speaker 1: the height of his art, and with a few exceptions,
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  Speaker 1: the poems represented in this volume are selected from the
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  Speaker 1: poems which were published between the years nineteen hundred and
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o eight, the ascent toward the acme of Rilka's
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  Speaker 1: art after the year nineteen hundred is as rapid as
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  Speaker 1: it is precipitous. Only a few years previous we read
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  Speaker 1: in advent that is longing to dwell in the flux
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  Speaker 1: of things, to have no home in the present. And
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  Speaker 1: these are wishes, gentle dialogues of the poor hours with eternity,
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  Speaker 1: with dasbulk der Birlde. The dream is ended, the veil
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  Speaker 1: of mist is lifted, and before us are revealed pictures
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  Speaker 1: and images that rise before our eyes in clear, colorful climes.
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  Speaker 1: Whether the poet conjures from the depths of myth the
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  Speaker 1: kings in legends, or whether we read from the chronicle
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  Speaker 1: of a monk the awe inspiring description of the Last
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  Speaker 1: judgment day, or whether in Paris, on a palm Sunday
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  Speaker 1: we see the maidens at confirmation. The pictures presented stand
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  Speaker 1: out with the clearness and finality of the typical. It
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  Speaker 1: is a significant fact that Rilka dedicated this book to
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  Speaker 1: Gerhardt Hoptmann in love and gratitude for his Michael Kramer. Hauptmann,
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  Speaker 1: like Rilke, in these poems, has placed before us great
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  Speaker 1: epic figures, and his art is so concentrated that often
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  Speaker 1: the simple expression of the thought of one of his
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  Speaker 1: characters produces a shudder in the listener or reader, because
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  Speaker 1: in this thought there vibrates the suffering of an entire
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  Speaker 1: social class, and in it resounds the sorrow of many generations.
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  Speaker 1: In the Book of Pictures, Rilka's art reaches its culmination
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  Speaker 1: on what might be termed its monumental side. The visualization
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  Speaker 1: is elevated to the impersonal objective level, which gives to
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  Speaker 1: the rhythm of these poems an imperturbable calm. To the
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  Speaker 1: figures presented in monumental erectness. The men of the House
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  Speaker 1: of Colonna, the Tsars Charles the Twelfth, riding through the Ukraine,
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  Speaker 1: are portrayed, each with his individual historical gesture, with luminosity
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  Speaker 1: as strong as the color and movement which they gave
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  Speaker 1: to their time In the mythical poem Kings in Legends,
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  Speaker 1: This concrete element in the art of Rilka has found
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  Speaker 1: perhaps its supreme expression. Kings in Old Legend seem like
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  Speaker 1: mountains rising in the evening light. They blind all with
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  Speaker 1: their gleam. Their loins encircled are by girdles bright, their
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  Speaker 1: robes are edged with bands of precious stones. The rarest
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  Speaker 1: earth affords with richly jeweled hands, they hold their slender
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  Speaker 1: shin naked swords. There are in the Book of Pictures
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  Speaker 1: poems in which this will to concentrate a mood into
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  Speaker 1: its essence and finality is applied to purely lyrical poems,
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  Speaker 1: as in Initiation that stands out in this volume like
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  Speaker 1: the great dark tree itself, so immeasurable is the straight
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  Speaker 1: line of its aspiration reaching into the far distant silence
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  Speaker 1: of the night, Or is in the poem entitled Autumn,
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  Speaker 1: with its melancholy mood of gentle descent in all nature.
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  Speaker 1: In the Book of Ours, Rilka withdraws from the world
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  Speaker 1: not from weariness, but weighed down under the manifold conflicting visions.
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  Speaker 1: As the prophet who would bring to the world a
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  Speaker 1: great possession must go forth into the desert to be
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  Speaker 1: alone until the kingdom comes to him from within. So
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  Speaker 1: the poet must leave the world in order to gain
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  Speaker 1: the deeper understanding to be face to face with God.
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  Speaker 1: The mood of Dashtundenbuk is this mood of being face
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  Speaker 1: to face with God. Yet elevates these poems to prayer,
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  Speaker 1: profound prayer of doubt and despair, exalted prayer of reconciliation
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  Speaker 1: and triumph. The Book of Ours contains three parts, written
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  Speaker 1: at different periods in the poet's life, the Book of
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  Speaker 1: a Monk's Life eighteen ninety nine, the Book of Pilgrimage
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o one, and the Book of Poverty and Death
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  Speaker 1: nineteen o three, although the entire volume was not published
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  Speaker 1: until several years later. The Book of Ours glows with
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  Speaker 1: a mystic fervor to know God, to be near him.
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  Speaker 1: In this desire to approach the nameless one, the young
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  Speaker 1: brother in the Book of a Monk's Life builds up
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: about God, parables, images and legends reminiscent of those in
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. Angelus Celsius was sustained by a more
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: pregnant language because exalted by a more ardent visionary force.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: The motif of them a Monk's Life is expressed in
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the poem, beginning with the lines I live my life
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: in circles that grow wide and endlessly unroll through the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: gray cell of the young monk. Their flash in luminous magnificence,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the colors of the great Renaissance masters, for he feels
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: in Titian, in Michelangelo and Raphael the same fervor that
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: animates him. They too are worshipers of the same God.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: There are poems in the Book of Pilgrimage of the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: stillness of a whispered prayer in a great cathedral, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: there are others that carry in their exultation the music
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of mighty hymns. The visions in this second book are
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: no less ecstatic, though less glowingly colorful. They have withdrawn
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: inward and have brought a great peace and a great faith,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: as in the poem of God, whose very manifestation is
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the quietude and hush of a silent world. By day,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: thou art the legend and the dream that like a
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: whisper floats about all men, the deep and brooding stillnesses
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: which seem after the hour has struck to close again,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and when the day, with drowsy gesture, bends and sinks
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: to sleep beneath the evening skies, as from each roof
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: a tower of smoke ascends, so does Thy realm, my
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: God around me rise. The last part of the Book
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: of Ours, the Book of Poverty and Death, is finally
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a symphony of variations on the two great symbolic themes
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: in the work of Rilka as Christ in the parable
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of the rich young man demands the abandonment of all treasures.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: So in this book the poet sees the coming of
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the Kingdom, the fulfillment of all our longings for a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: nearness to God, when we have become simple again like
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: little children, and poor in possessions, like God himself. In
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: this phase of Rel's development, the principle of renunciation constitutes
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: a certain negative element in his philosophy. The poet later
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: proceeded toward a positive acquiescence, toward man's possessions, at least
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: those acquired or created in the domain of art. In
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: our approach through the mystic we touch reality most deeply.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: It is because of this that all art and all
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: philosophy culminate in their final forms in a crystallization of
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: those values of life that remain forever inexplicable to pure reason.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: They become religious in the simple, profound sense of that word,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: before the eternal facts of life, doubt and strife are
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: reconciled into faith, will and pride change into humility. The
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: realization of this truth, expressed in the medium of poetry,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: is the significance of Rilka's Book of Ours, a distinguished
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Scandinavian writer has pronounced Dashtun the book one of the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: supreme literary achievements of our time and its deepest and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: most beautiful book of prayer. In his subsequent poetic work,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Rilke did not again reach the sustained high quality of
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: this book, the mood and idea of which he incorporated
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: into a prose work of exquisite lyrical beauty, the Sketch
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of the Mal de l'auretzbrige in New Poems nineteen o
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: seven and New Poem's Second Part nineteen o eight. The
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: historical figure frequently taken from the Old Testament has grown
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: beyond the proportions of life. It is weightier with fate
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and invariably becomes the means of expressing symbolically an abstract
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: thought or a great human destiny. Abaschong presents the contrast
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: between the dawning and the fading life. David's singing before
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Saul shows the impatience of awakening ambition, and Joshua is
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the man who forces even God to do his will.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: The antique hellenic world rises with shining splendor in the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: poem's urina Tsappho lament for antinous early Apollo and the
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: archaic torso of Apollo. The spirit of the Middle Ages,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: with its religious fervor and superstitious fanaticism, is symbolized in
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: several poems, the most important among which are the Cathedral
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: God in the Middle Ages, Saint Sebastian personifying martyrdom, and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the Rose Window, whose glowing magic is compared to the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: hypnotic power of the tiger's eye. Modern Paris is often
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the background of the new poems, and the crass play
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of light and shadow upon the waxen masks of life's
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: disillusioned in the morgue is caught with the same intense
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: realistic vision as the flamingos and parrots spreading their very
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: coloured soft plumage in the warmth of the sun in
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: the avenue of the Jardande Plain. Almost all of the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: poems in these two volumes are short and precise. The
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: images are portrayed with the sensitive intensity of impressionistic technique.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: The majestic quietude of the long lines of the Book
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: of Pictures is broken. The colors are more vibrant, more scintillating,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and the pictures are painted in nervous, darting strokes, as
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: though to convey the manner in which they were perceived
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: in one single, all absorbing glance. For this reason, many
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of these new poems are not quite free from a
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: certain element of virtuosity. On the other hand, Rilka achiese
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: at times a perfect surety of rapid stroke, as in
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: the poem the Spanish Dancer, who rises luminously on the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: horizon of our inner vision, like a circling element of fire,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: flaming and blinding in the momentum of her movements. De
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Ga and Zuloaga seem to have combined their art on
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: one canvas to give to this dancer the abundant elasticity
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: of grace and the splendid fantasy of color. Many of
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the themes in the new poems bear testimony to the
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: fact that Rielka traveled extensively prior to the writing of
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: these volumes in Italy, Germany, France and Scandinavia. His book
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: on the Five Painters at the Artist Colony at Vorpsfider,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: where he remained for a time entirely given over to
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the observation of the atmosphere. The movement of the sky
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and the play of light upon the far heath of
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: this northern landscape is an introduction to every interpretation of
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the work of landscape painters, and a tender poem to
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: a land whose solitary and melancholy beauty entered into his
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: own work. More vital than the influence of the personalities
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: and the art treasures of the countries which Wilka visited,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: and more potent in its effect upon his creations, Like
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a great son over the most fruitful years of his life,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: stands the towering personality of Agustrodan. The new poems bear
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the dedication a monron Ami august Rodan, indicating the twofold
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: influence which the French sculptor wielded over the poet, that
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: of a friend and that of an artist. One recalls
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the broad, solidly built figure of Rodin, with his rugged
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: features and high, finely chiseled forehead, moving slowly among the white,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: glistening marble busts and statues, as a giant in an
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: old legend moves among the rocks and mountains of his realm, patient,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: all enduring the man who is mastered life, strong and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: tempered by the storms of time. And one thinks of
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Rener Maria Ricca, young blonde, with his slender, aristocratic figure.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: The slightly bent forward figure of one who, on solitary walks,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: meditates much and intense, with his sensitive, full mouth and
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the firm structure of the eyebrow gladly sunk in the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: shadow of contemplation, the face full of dreams, and with
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: an expression of listening to some distant music. From no
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: other book of his, not accepting the book of ours,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: can we deduce so accurate a conception of Rilka's philosophy
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of life and art as we can draw from his
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: comparatively short monograph on august Rodan. Wilka sees in Rodin
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the dominant personification in our age of the power of
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: servitude in all nature. For this reason, the Book on
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Rodin is far more than a purely esthetic valuation of
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the sculptor's work. Rilka traces throughout the book the strongly
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: ethical principle which works itself out in every creative act
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: in the realm of art. This grasp of the deeper
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: significance of all art gives to the Book on Rodin
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: its well nigh religious aspect of thought and its hymn
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: like rhythm of expression. He begins Rodin was solitary before
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: fame came to him and afterward he became perhaps still
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: more solitary for famous. Ultimately, but the summary of all
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name, and he sums
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: up this one man's greatness. Sometime it will be realized
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: what has made this great artist so supreme. He was
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: his forces into the humble and the difficult significance of
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: his tool. Therein lay a certain renunciation of life. But
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: in just this renunciation lay his triumph for life entered
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: into his work. Rodin became to Rilka the manifestation of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the divine principle of the creative impulse in man. Thus,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Rilka's monograph on Agustrodan will remain the poet's testament on
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: life and art. Rilka has lived deeply. He has absorbed
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: into his artistic and spiritual consciousness many of the supreme
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: values of our time. His art holds the mystic depth
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: of the slav, the musical strength of the German, and
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: the visual clarity of the Latin. As artist, he has
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: felt life to be sacred, and as a priest, he
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: has brought to its altar many offerings. Ht New York City,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Autumn nineteen eighteen. End of introduction, Section one of poems
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: by Reynaer Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen sixty
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: two to nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording is in
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: the public domain. First Poems, Evening the bleak feel else
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: our sleep. My heart alone wakes the evening in the
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: harbor down his red sails takes night. Guardian of dreams
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: now wanders through the land. The moon A lily white
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: blossoms within her hand. Mary virgin? How came? How came
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: from out thy night? Mary? So much light and so
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: much gloom? Who was thy bridegroom? Thou callst? Thou callst,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: and thou hast forgot that thou the same art? Not?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Who came to me in thy virginity? I am still
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: so blossoming, so young? How shall I go on tiptoe
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: from childhood to annunciation, through the dim twilight into thy garden?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: End of section one, Section two of poems by Rainer
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen sixty two to
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: The Book of Pictures, Part one of three presaging. I
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: am like a flag unfurled in space. I scent the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: oncoming winds and must bend with them, while the things
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: beneath are not yet stirring, while doors close gently, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: there are silence in the chimneys, and the windows do
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: not yet tremble, and the dust is still heavy. Then
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: I feel storm an in vibrant like the sea, and
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: expand and withdraw into myself, and thrust myself forth. And
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I'm alone in the great storm autumn. The leaves fall
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: fall is from far, like distant gardens withered in the heavens.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: They fall with slow and lingering descent. And in the
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: nights the heavy earth too falls from out the stars
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: into this solitude. Thus all doth fall. This hand of
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: mine must fall, and lo the other one. It is
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the law. But there is one who holds this falling
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: infinitely softly in his hands. Silence our Whoever weeps somewhere
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: out in the world weeps without cause, in the world
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: weeps over me. Whoever laughs somewhere out in the night
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: laughs without cause in the night, laughs at me. Whoever
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: wanders somewhere in the world wanders in vain in the world,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: wanders to me. Whoever dies somewhere in the world dies
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: without cause. In the world looks at me. The angels,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: they all have tired mouths, and luminous, illimitable souls, and
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a longing as if for sin, trembles at times through
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: their dreams. They all resemble one another. In God's garden.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: They are silent, like many many intervals in his mighty melody.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But when they spread their wings, they awaken the winds
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: that stir, as though God, with his far reaching master hands,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: turned the pages of the dark book of Beginning. Solitude.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Solitude is like a rain that from the sea at
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: dusk begins to rise. It floats remote across the far
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: off plain, upward into its dwelling place, the skies, then
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: o'er the town. It slowly sinks again, like rain, It
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: softly falls at that dim hour when ghostly lanes turn
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: toward the shadowy morn, when bodies weighed with satiate passions, power, sad,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: disappointed from each other, turn, when men with quiet hatred,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: burning deep together in a common bed must sleep through
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the gray phantom shadows of the dawn. Low solitude floats
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: down the river Wan kings in legends, kings in old
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: legends seem like mountains rising in the evening light. They
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: blind all with their gleam. Their loins encircled are by
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: girdles bright, their robes are edged with bands of precious stones.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: The rarest earth affords with richly jeweled hands, they hold
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: their slender, shining naked swords the night. The night rides
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: forth in coat of mail into the roar of the world.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: And here is life, the vines in the veil, and
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: friend and foe, and the feast in the hall, and May,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: and the maid, and the glen and the grail. God's
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: flags afloat on every wall in a thousand streets, unfurled
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: beneath the armor of the night, behind the chain's black lynks.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Death crouches and thinks and thinks. When will the swords blade,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: sharp and bright forth from the scabbard, spring and cut
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the network of the cloak, enmeshing me ring on ring?
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: When will the foes deliver ring stroke, set me free
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: to dance and sing? The boy I wish I might
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: become like one of these who in the night on
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: horses wild astride with torches flaming out like loosened hair,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: on to the chase through the great swift wind ride.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I wish to stand as on a boat, and dare
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: the sweeping storm, mighty like flag unrolled in darkness, but
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: with helmet made of gold that shimmers restlessly, and in
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: a row behind me in the dark, ten men that glow,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: with helmets that are restless, too, like mine, now old
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and dull, now clear as glass, they shine. One stands
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: by me and blows a blast apace on his great
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: flashing trumpet, and the sound shrieks through the vast black
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: solitude around through which, as through a wild, mad dream,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: we race. The houses fall behind us on their knees
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: before us bend the streets, and them we gain. The
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: great squares yield to us, and them we seize, and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: on our steeds rush like the roar of rain initiation.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Whosoever thou art out in the evening, roam out from
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: thy room, thou knowest in every part, and far in
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the dim distance, leave thy home. Whosoever thou art, lift
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: thine eyes, which lingering see the shadows on the foot
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: worn threshold fall. Lift thine eyes slowly to the great
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: dark tree that stands against heaven, solitary tall, and thou
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: hast visioned life, its meanings rise like words that, in
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: the silence clear grow as they unfold before thy will
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: to know gently, withdraw thine eyes the neighbor strange violin,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: dost thou follow me in many foreign cities far away?
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Thy lone voice spoke to me like memory? Do hundreds
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: play thee? Or does but one play? Are there in
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: all great cities tempest tossed men who would seek the
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: rivers but for thee, Who but for thee, would be
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: forever lost? Why drifts thy lonely voice always to me?
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Why am I the neighbor always of those who force
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to sing thy trembling strings. Life is more heavy, thy
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: song says than the vast heavy burden of all things.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: End of section two, Section three of Poems by Reinner
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen sixty two to
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording is in the public
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: domain The Book of Pictures, Part two of three. Song
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of the Statue, whoso loveth me that he will give
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: his precious life for me, I shall be set free
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: from the stone. If someone drowns from me and the sea,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I shall have life, life of my own. For life
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I ache, I long for the singing blood. The stone
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: is so still and cold. I dream of life, life
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: is good. Will no one love me and be bold
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and me awake? I weep and weep alone, weep always
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: for my stone. What joy is my blood to me?
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: If it ripens like red wine, it cannot call back
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: from the sea the life that was given for mine,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: given for love's sake, Maidens. One others must, by a
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: long dark away, stray to the mystic bards, or ask
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: some one who has heard them sing, or touch the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: magic chords. Only the maidens question, not the bridges that
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: lead to dream. Their luminous smiles are like strands of
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: pearls on a silver vase. Agleam the maiden's door of
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: life lead out where the song of the poet's soars,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: and out beyond to the great world, to the world
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: beyond the doors Maidens too, Maidens, the poets learn from
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: you to tell how solitary and remote you are. As
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: night is lighted by one high bright star. They draw
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: light from the distance where you dwell. For poet, you
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: must always maiden be, even though his eyes the woman
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: in you wake wedding brocade, your fragile wrists would break,
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: mysterious elusive from him, flee within his garden, Let him
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: wait alone, where benches stand expectant, in the shade, within
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the chamber where the lyre was played, where he received
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: you as the eternal one. Go. It grows dark, Your
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: voice and form no more his senses seek. He now
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: no longer sees a white robe fluttering under dark beech trees,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: along the pathway where it gleamed before. He loves the
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: long paths where no footfalls ring, And he loves much
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: the silent chamber, where, like a soft whisper through the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: quiet air, he hears your voice, far distant, vanishing. The
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: softly stealing echo comes again from crowds of men whom
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: wearily he shuns, And many see you there. So his
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: thought runs, and tenderest memories are pierced with pain. The
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: bride call me, beloved, Call aloud to me, thy bride.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Her vigil at the window keeps. The evening wanes to dusk.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: The dimness creeps down the empty alleys of the old
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: plane tree. Oh, let thy voice unfold me close about
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: or from this dark house, lonely and remote, through deep
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: blue gardens where gray shadows float I will pour forth
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: my soul with hands stretched out autumnal day. Lord, it
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: is time so great with summer's glow. Thy shadows lay
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: upon the dial's faces and o'er wide spaces. Let thy
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: tempests blow. Command to ripen the last fruits of thine.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Give to them two more burning days, and press the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: last sweetness into the heavy wine. He who has now
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: no house will ne'er build. One who is alone will
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: now remain alone. He will awake, will read, will letters
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: write through the long day, and in the lonely night
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: and restless solitary, he will rove where the leaves rustle,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: wind blown in the grove. Moonlight night South German night,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: The ripe moon hangs above, weaving enchantment o'er the shadowy
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: lee from the old tower. The hours fall heavily into
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the dark, as though into the sea. A rustle, a
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: call of night watch in the grove. Then for a
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: while voids silence fills the air, and then a violin
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: from God knows where awakes and slowly sings, oh, loh oh.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: In April again, the woods are odorous. The lark lifts
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: on upsoaring wings. The heaven gray that hung above the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: tree tops veiled and dark, where branches bare disclose the
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: empty day. After long rainy afternoons, an hour comes with
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: its shafts of golden light and flings them at the
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: windows in a radiant shower, and rain drops beat the
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: panes like timorous wings. Then all is still. The stones
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: are crooned to sleep by the soft sound of rain
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: that slowly dies, and cradled in the branches, hidden deep
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: in each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies memories of
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: a childhood. The darkness hung like richness in the room
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: when like a dream, the mother entered there, and then
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: a glass's tinkle stirred the air, near where a boy
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: sat in the silent gloom. The room betrayed the mother,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: so she felt. She kissed her boy and questioned, are
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you here, And with a gesture that he held most
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: dear down for a moment by his side, she knelt
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: toward the piano. They both shyly glanced, for she would
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: sing to him on many a night, and the child,
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: seated in the fading light, would listen strangely, as if
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: half entranced. His large eyes fastened with a quiet glow
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: upon the hand which by her ring seemed bent and
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: slowly wandering o'er the white keys went, moving as though
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: against a drift of snow. Death before us, great death
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: stands our fate, held close within his quiet hands, When
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: with proud joy we lift life's red wine to drink
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: deep of the mystic shining cup, and ecstasy through all
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: our being leaps. Death bows his head and weeps the
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: ashanti gardins d'acrimatachion paris. No vision of exotic southern countries.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: No dancing women, supple, brown and tall, whirling from out
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: their falling draperies to melodies that beat a fierce mad call.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: No sound of songs that from the hot blood rise.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: No languorous, stretching, dusky velvet maids flashing like gleaming weapon
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: their eyes. No swift, wild thrill the quickening blood pervades,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: Only mouths widening with a still broad smile of comprehension,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: a strange knowing leer at white men, at their vanity
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: and guile, an understanding that fills one with fear. The
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: beasts in cages, much more loyal, are restlessly pacing, pacing
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: to and fro, dreaming of countries, beckoning from afar lands
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: where they roamed in days of long ago. They burn
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: with an unquenched and smothered fire, consumed by longings over
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: which they brood, oblivious of time, without desire, alone and
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: lost in their great solitude. End of section three, Section
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: four of poems by Reiner Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Lamont eighteen sixty two to nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The Book of Pictures,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Part three of three Remembrance, Expectant and waiting. You muse
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: on the great rare thing which alone to enhance your life,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you would choose the awakening of the stone, the deeps,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: where yourself you would lose in the dusk of the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: shells embossed shine the volumes, in golds and browns. And
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you think of countries once crossed, of pictures of shimmering gowns,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: of the women that you have lost. And it comes
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: to you then at last, and you rise, for you
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: are aware of a year in the far off past,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: with its wonder and fear and prayer. Music. What play you,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: oh boy? Through the garden it stole like wandering steps,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: like a whisper than mute? What play you, oh boy? Lo,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Your gipsying soul is caught and held fast in the
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: pipes of Pan's flute. And what conjure you imprisoned is
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the song. It lingers and longs in the reeds where
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: it lies. Your young life is strong, But how much
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: more strong is the longing that through your music size.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: Let your flute be still, and your soul float through
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: waves of sound, formless as waves of the sea. For
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: here your's song lived, and it wisely grew before it
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: was forced into melody. Its wings beat gently, its note
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: no more calls. Its flight has been spent by you,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: dreaming boy. Now it no longer steals over my walls.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: But in my garden i'd woo it to joy maiden melancholy.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: A young knight comes into my mind, as from some
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: myth of old. He came. You felt yourself entwined, as
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: a great storm would round you wind he went, a
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: blessing undefined, seemed left as when church bells declined and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: left you wrapt in prayer. You fain would cry aloud,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: But bind your scarf about you, and to your blind
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: weep softly in its fold. A young knight comes into
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: my mind, full armored forth to fare his smile was luminously, kind,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: like glint of ivory, enshrined like a home, longing, undivined
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: like Christmas snows, where dark ways wind like sea pearls
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: about turquoise, twined like moonlight silver, when combined with the
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: loved book's rare gold maidens. At Confirmation Paris in May
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen o three, the white veiled maids to Confirmation go
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: through deep green garden paths. They slowly whind their childhood
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: they are leaving now behind the future will be different,
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: they know, Oh, will it come? They wait, It must
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: come soon. The next long hour slowly strikes. At last
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: the whole house stirs again. The feast is past and
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: sadly passes by the afternoon, like resurrection. Were the garments white.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: The wreathed procession walked through trees, arched wide into the church,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: as cool as silk, inside with long aisles of tall
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: candles flaming bright. The lights all shone like jewels, rich
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: and rare, to solemnies that watched them, gleam and flare.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Then through the silence, the great song rose high up
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: to the vaulted dome like clouds, its soared, then luminously
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: gently down it poured over white veils like rain, it
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: seemed to die. The winds through the white garments softly stirred,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: and they grew very colored in each fold, and each
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: fold hidden blossoms seemed to hold, and flowers and stars,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: and fluting notes of bird, and dim quaint figures shimmering
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: like gold seemed to come forth from distant mids of old. Outside,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the day was one of green and blue, with touches
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: of a luminous glowing red across the quiet pond. The
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: small waves sped beyond the city gardens hidden from view,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: sent odors of sweet blossoms on the breeze, and singing
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: sounded through the far off trees. It was as though
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: garlands crowned everything, and all things were touched softly by
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: the sun. And many windows opened one by one, and
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the light trembled on them, glistening. The woman who loves Ah, Yes,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I long for you. To you, I glide and lose myself,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: for to you I belong. The hope that hitherto I
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: have denied imperious comes to me as from your side, serious,
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: unfaltering and swift and strong. Those times, the times when
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: I was quite alone by memories wrapt, that whispered to
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: me low. My silence was the quiet of a stone
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: over which rippling, murmuring waters slow. But in these weeks
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: of the awakening spring, something within me has been freed,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: something that in the past dark years unconscious lay, which
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: rises now within me and commands and gives my poor,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: warm life into your hands. Who know not what I
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: was that yesterday Ponte Carousel Upon the bridge, the blind
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: man stands alone, gray, like a mist veiled monument. He towers,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: as though of nameless realms, the boundary stone about which
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: circle distant starry hours he seems, the center around which
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: stars glow, while all Earth's ostentations surge below, immovably and silently.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: He stands placed where the confused current ebbs and flows
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: past fathomless dark depths that he commands. A shallow generation
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: drifting goes madness. She thinks, I am have you not seen?
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Who are you? Then? Marie? I am a queen? I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: am a queen? To your knee, to your knee, And
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: then she weeps, I was a child. Who were you then, Marie?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Know you that I was no man's child, poor and
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: in rags, said she. And then a princess I became
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: to whom men bend their knees to princes. Things are
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: not the same as those a beggar sees. And those
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: things which have made you great came to you. Tell
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: me when one night, one night, one night, quite late,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: things became different. Then I walked the lane, which presently
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: with strung cords, seemed to bend. Then Marie became melody
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and danced from end to end. The people watched with
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: startled mean and passed with frightened glance. For I'll know
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: that only a queen may dance in the lanes, dance lament. Oh,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: all things are long passed away, and far a light
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: is shining. But the distant star from which it still
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: comes to me has been dead a thousand years. In
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: the dim phantom boat that glided past, some ghastly thing
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: was said, A clock just struck within some house, remote
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: which house? I long to still my beating heart. Beneath
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: the sky's vast dome, I long to pray. Of all
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the stars, there must be, far away a single star
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: which still exists apart, And I believe that I should
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: know the one which has alone endured, and which alone,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: like a white city, that all space commands at the
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: ray's end in the high heaven stands symbols from infinite longings.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Finite deeds rise as fountain spring toward far off glowing skies,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: but rushing swiftly upward, weakly bend and trembling from their
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: lack of power, descend. So through the falling torrent of
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: our fears, our joyous force leaps like these dancing tears.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: End of section four Section five of poems by Rainer
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen sixty two to
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording is in the public
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: domain New Poems early Apollo as when at times there
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: breaks through branches bare a morning, vibrant with the breath
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: of spring about this poet head, a splendor rare transforms
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: it almost too a mortal thing. There is as yet
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: no shadow in his glance to cool his temples, for
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: the laurels glow. But later o'er those marble brows, perchance
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: a rose garden with bushes tall will grow, and the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: single petals, one by one will fall o'er the still
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: mouth and break its silent thrall, the mouth that trembles
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: with a dawning smile, as though a song were rising
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: there the while the tomb of a young girl we
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: still remember the same as of yore. All that has
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: happened once again must be as grows a lemon tree
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: upon the shore. It was like that, your light, small
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: breasts you bore, and his blood's current coursed like the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: wild sea. That God who was the wanderer, the slim,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: despoiler of fair women. He the wise, but sweet and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: glowing as your thoughts of him, who cast a shadow
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: over your young limb, while bending like your arched brows
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: o'er your eyes. The poet you hour from me, you
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: ever take your flight, Your swift wings wound me as
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: they were along Without you, void would be my day
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and night Without you, I'll not capture my great song.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: I have no earthly spot where I can live. I
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: have no love, I have no household, fame, and all
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: the things to which myself I give impoverish me with richness.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: They attain the panther, his weary glance from passing by
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the bars has grown into a dazed and vacant stare.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: It seems to him there are a thousand bars, and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: out beyond those bars the empty air, the pad of
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: his strong feet, that ceaseless sound of supple tread behind
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: the iron bands, is like a dance of strength circling around,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: while in the circle stunned, a great will stands. But
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: there are times the pupils of his eyes dilate. The
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: strong limbs stand alert, apart, tense with the flood of
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: visions that arise only to sink and die within his heart,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: growing blind. Among all the others, there sat a guest
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: who sipped her tea as if apart, and she held
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: her cup not quite like the rest. Once she smiled,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: so it pierced one's heart. When the group of people
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: arose at last and laughed and talked in a merry tone,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: as lingeringly through the rooms they passed, I saw that
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: she followed alone, tense and still, like one who to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: sing must rise before a throng on a festal night.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: She lifted her head, and her bright, glad eyes were
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: like pools which reflected light. She followed on slowly after
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the last, as though some object must be passed by,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: and yet as if were at once but passed, she
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: would no longer walk but fly. The Spanish dancer as
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: a lit match first flickers in the hands, before it
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: flames and darts out from all sides, bright twitching tongueung
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: so ringed by growing bands of spectators, She quivering, glowing,
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: stands poised tensely for the dance. Then forward, glides and
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: suddenly becomes a flaming torch. Her bright hair flames, her
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: burning glances scorch, and with a daring art at her command,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: her whole robe blazes like a firebrand, from which is
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: stretched each naked arm awake, gleaming and rattling like a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: frightened snake. And then, as though the fire fainter grows,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: she gathers up the flame again it glows as with
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: proud gesture and imperious air, she flings it to the earth,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: and it lies there furiously flickering and crackling still. Then,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: haughtily victorious, but with sweet, swift smile of greeting, she
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: puts forth her will and stamps the flames out with
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: her small, firm feet, offering. My body glows in every
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: vein and blooms to fullest flower since I first knew thee.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: My walk unconscious pride and power assumes who art thou?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Then thou who awaitest me when from the past I
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: draw myself the While I lose old traits as leaves
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: of autumn fall, I only know the radiance of thy smile,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: like the soft gleam of stars transforming. All through childhood's years,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I wandered, unaware of shimmering visions. My thoughts now arrests
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: to offer thee is on an altar fair that's lighted
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: by the bright flame of thy hair and wreathed by
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: the blossoms of thy breasts. Love song. When my soul
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: touches yours, a great chord sings. How shall I tune it?
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: Then to u? Oh, that some spot in darkness could
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: be found that does not vibrate whene'er your depths sound,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: but everything that touches you and me welds us as
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: played strings sound one melody. Where is the instrument? Whence
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the sounds flow? And who's the master hand that holds
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: the bow? Oh? Sweet song? Archaic torso of Apollo. We
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: cannot fathom his mysterious head through the veiled eyes, no
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: flickering ray ascent, But from his torso gleaming light is
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: shed as from a candelabrium inward bent his glance there
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: glows and lingers. Otherwise the round breast would not blind
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: you with its grace, Nor could the soft curved circle
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: of the thighs steal to the arc whence issues a
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: new race. Nor could the stark and stunted stone display
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: vibrants beneath the shoulder's heavy bar, nor shine like fur
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: upon a beast of prey, nor break forth from its
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: lines like a great star. There is no spot that
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: does not bind you fast and transport you back back
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: to a far past. End of section five Section six
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two to nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The Book of a Monk's Life.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: I live my life in circles that grow wide and
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: endlessly unroll. I may not reach the last, but on
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: I glide, strong, pinioned toward my goal about the old tower,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: dark against the sky. The beat of my wings hums
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I circle about God, sweep far and high on through millenniums.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Am I a bird that skims the clouds along? Or
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: am I a wild storm or a great song? Many
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: have painted her, But there was one who drew his
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: radiant colors from the sun, mysteriously glowing through a background
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: dim When he was suffering, she came to him, and
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: all the heavy pain within his heart rose in his
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: hands and stole into his art. His canvass is the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: beautiful bright veil through which her sorrow shines. There Where
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the texture o'er her sad lips is closely drawn, A
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: trembling smile softly begins to dawn. Though angels with seven
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: candles light the place, you cannot read the secret of
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: her face in cassocks clad. I have had many brothers
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: in southern cloisters, where the laurel grows. They paint madonnas
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: like fair human mothers. And I dream of young Titians,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: and of others in which the God with shining radiance glows.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: But though my vigil constantly I keep, my God is dark,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: like woven texture, flowing a hundred drinking roots, all intertwined.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: I only know that from his warmth I'm growing more.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: I know not my roots lie hidden deep. My branches
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: only are swayed by the wind. Thou anxious one, and
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: dost thou then not hear against thee All my surging
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: senses sing about thy face in circles, drawing near. My
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: thought floats like a fluttering white wing. Dost thou not
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: see before thee stands my soul in silence, wrapt my
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: springtime's prayer to pray. But when thy glance rests on me,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: then my whole being quickens and blooms like trees in may.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: When thou art dreaming, then I am thy dream. But
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: when thou art awake, I am thy will, potent with splendor,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: radiant and sublime, expanding like far space starlight, and still
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: into the distant mystic realm of time. I love my
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: life's dark hours, in which my senses quicken and grow deep,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: while from faint incense of faded flowers or letters old,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: I magically steep myself in days gone by again, I
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: give myself unto the past again. I live out of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: my dark hours. Wisdom dawns apace, infinite life unrolls its
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: boundless space. Then I am shaken, as a sweeping storm
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave, round
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: whose cold clay. The roots twine fast and warm, and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, dreams that
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: were closely cherished, and for long are lost once more
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: in sadness and in song. End of section six, Section
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: seven of poems by Reiner Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: Lamont eighteen sixty two to nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The Book of Pilgrimage
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: by Day, Thou art the legend and the dream that
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: like a whisper floats about all men, the deep and
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: brooding stillnesses which seem after the hour had struck to
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: close again, and when the day, with drowsy gesture, bends
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: and sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies. As from
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: each roof a tower of smoke ascends, so does Thy realm,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: my God around me rise. All those who seek THEE,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: tempt THEE, and those who find would bind THEE to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: gesture and to form, But I would comprehend THEE. As
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: the wide earth unfolds THEE. Thou growest with my maturity,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Thou art in calm and storm. I ask of THEE
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: no vanity to evidence improve THEE. Thou wert in eons old.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Perform no miracles for me, but justify Thy laws to me,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: which as the years pass by me, all soundlessly unfold.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: In a house was one who arose from the feast
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: and went forth to wander in distant lands, because as
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: there was somewhere far off in the east a spot
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: which he sought, where a great church stands. And ever
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: his children, when breaking their bread, thought of him, and
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: rose up and blessed him as dead. In another house
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: was the one who had died, who still sat at
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: table and drank from the glass, and ever within the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: walls did abide, for out of the house he could
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: no more pass, and his children set forth to seek
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: for the spot where stands the great church, which he forgot.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Extinguish my eyes, I still can see you close my ears,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: I can hear your footsteps fall. And without feet I
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: still can follow you. And without voice I still can
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: to you call. Break off my arms, and I can
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: embrace you and fold you with my heart, as with
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: a hand hold my heart. My brain will take fire
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: of you as flax ignites from a lit fire brand,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: and flame will sweep in a swift, rushing flood through
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: all the singing currents of my blood. In the deep nights,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: I dig for you, o treasure, to seek you over
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: the wide world I roam, for all abundance is but
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: meager measure of your bright beauty, which is yet to come.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Over the road to you. The leaves are blowing, few
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: follow it. The way is long and steep. You dwell
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: in solitude? Oh, does your glowing heart in some far
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: off valley lie asleep? My bloody hands with digging bruise
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: I've lifted spread like a tree. I stretch them in
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: the air to find you. Before day to night has drifted,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: I reach out into space to seek you. There, Then,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: as though with a swift, impatient gesture, flashing from distant stars,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: on sweeping wing, you come, and over earth a magic
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: gesture steals gently as the rain falls in the spring.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: End of section seven, Section eight of Poems by Rainer
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: Maria Rilke, translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen sixty two to
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven. This LibriVox recording is in the public
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: domain the Book of Poverty and Death. Her mouth is
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: like the mouth of a fine bust that cannot utter sound,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: nor breathe, nor kiss, but that had once from life
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: received all this which shaped its subtle curves, and ever must,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: from fullness of past knowledge dwell alone a thing apart
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: a parabole in stone alone, Thou wanderest through space, profound
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: with the hidden face. Thou art poverty's great rose, the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: eternal metamorphose of gold into the light of sun. Thou
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: art the mystic homeless one into the world. Thou never
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: came too mighty, Thou too great to name. Voice of
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: the storm, song that the wild wind sings, Thou harp
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: that shatters those who play thy strings. A watcher of
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: thy spaces. Make me, make me a listener at thy stone,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: Give to me vision, and then wake me upon thy oceans,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: all alone, thy river's courses. Let me follow where they leap,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the crags in their flight, and where at dusk, in
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: caverns hollow they croon to music of the night. Send
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: me far into thy barren land, where the snow clouds
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the wild wind drive, where monasteries like gray shrouds stand
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: august symbols of unlived lives. There pilgrims climb slowly, one
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: by one, and behind them a blind man goes with him.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: I will walk till day is done up the pathway
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: that no one knows. End of Section eight. End of
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: Poems by Rayner Maria Rilka translated by Jesse Lamont eighteen
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: sixty two to nineteen forty seven. Hello, this is Eva Davis,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and thank you for listening to my recording of Rilka's poems.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: And thank you too to Algie Pug who proof listened
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: this whole recording. Without his warm encouragement to me and
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: so many others at LibriVox, this project wouldn't exist. June fifteenth,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, m d I, Maine,