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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