Analysis of In The Beginning

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



Ever since those wondrous days of Creation
our Lord God sleeps: we are His sleep.
And He accepted this in His indulgence,
resigned to rest among the distant stars.

Our actions stopped Him from reacting,
for His fist-tight hand is numbed by sleep,
and the times brought in the age of heroes
during which our dark hearts plundered Him.

Sometimes He appears as if tormented,
and His body jerks as if plagued by pain;
but these spells are always outweighed by the
number of His countless other worlds.

Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming


Scheme XAXX BAXX XXXX B
Poetic Form
Metre 10111011010 101111111 01010101010 0111010101 1010111010 111111111 0011001110 1011011101 011011110 0110111111 111110110 101110101 0101101010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 530
Words 95
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 1
Lines Amount 13
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 108
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

28 sec read
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Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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