What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands?

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



What fields are as fragrant as your hands?
You feel how external fragrance stands
upon your stronger resistance.
Stars stand in images above.
Give me your mouth to soften, love;
ah, your hair is all in idleness.

See, I want to surround you with yourself
and the faded expectation lift
from the edges of your eyebrows;
I want, as with inner eyelids sheer,
to close for you all places which appear
by my tender caresses now.

Translated by John J.L. Mood

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

25 sec read
503

Quick analysis:

Scheme AAXBBX XXXCCX X
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 447
Words 84
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 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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    "What Fields Are As Fragrant As Your Hands?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29749/what-fields-are-as-fragrant-as-your-hands?>.

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