Analysis of The Sonnets To Orpheus: I
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence!
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear!
And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence
a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.
Creatures of stillness crowded from the bright
unbound forest, out of their lairs and nests;
and it was not from any dullness, not
from fear, that they were so quiet in themselves,
but from just listening. Bellow, roar, shriek
seemed small inside their hearts. And where there had been
at most a makeshift hut to receive the music,
a shelter nailed up out of their darkest longing,
with an entryway that shuddered in the wind-
you built a temple deep inside their hearing.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Scheme | AXAX XAXA XXX BXB X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 010101111 11001111001 01111100110 01010100101 1011010101 0110111101 0111110101 11110110001 1111001011 11011101111 11011101010 010111111010 11100110001 11010101110 01011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 678 |
Words | 120 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 3, 3, 1 |
Lines Amount | 15 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 109 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 36 sec read
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"The Sonnets To Orpheus: I" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29734/the-sonnets-to-orpheus%3A-i>.
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