Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?)

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



Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of joy.
Loveliest in my invisible
landscape, you that made me more known
to the invisible angels.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 11, 2023

27 sec read
138

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXCXX AXCXXBXX B
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 511
Words 91
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 8, 1

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…

All Rainer Maria Rilke poems | Rainer Maria Rilke Books

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