The Wait
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
It is life in slow motion,
it's the heart in reverse,
it's a hope-and-a-half:
too much and too little at once.
It's a train that suddenly
stops with no station around,
and we can hear the cricket,
and, leaning out the carriage
door, we vainly contemplate
a wind we feel that stirs
the blooming meadows, the meadows
made imaginary by this stop.
Translated by A. Poulin
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 21 sec read
- 684 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XXXX XXXX XXXX X |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 363 |
Words | 68 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 1 |
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"The Wait" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29742/the-wait>.
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