Analysis of Heartbeat
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Only mouths are we. Who sings the distant heart
which safely exists in the center of all things?
His giant heartbeat is diverted in us
into little pulses. And his giant grief
is, like his giant jubilation, far too
great for us. And so we tear ourselves away
from him time after time, remaining only
mouths. But unexepectedly and secretly
the giant heartbeat enters our being,
so that we scream ----,
and are transformed in being and in countenance.
Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming
Scheme | XXXXXXAABXX B |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111110101 110010010111 1101101001 01101001101 1111001011 111011100101 11110101010 1110100 0101101010 1111 010101000100 0101101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 482 |
Words | 86 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 1 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 194 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 25 sec read
- 553 Views
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"Heartbeat" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29678/heartbeat>.
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