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 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABXCXX AXCXXBXX B |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 511 |
Words | 91 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 8, 1 |
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"Lament (Whom will you cry to, heart?)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29688/lament-(whom-will-you-cry-to,-heart?)>.
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