Rainer Maria Rilke

Swing of the heart
O firmly hung, fastened on whatinvisible branch
Who, who gave you the push,that you swung with me into the leaves
How near I was to the exquisite fruits

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies
and even if one of them suddenlypressed me against his heart,
I would perishin the embrace of his stronger existence
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terrorwh...

Sometimes she walks through the village in her little red dressall absorbed in restraining herself,and yet, despite herself, she seems to moveaccording to the rhythm of her life to come
She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,half-turns around…and, ...

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken
I want my deepest pious feelings freed
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrantwill be for me a challenge I must meet
If this presumptuous seems,

O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes
We are not of one mind
Are not like birdsin unison migrating
And overtaken,overdue, we thrust ourselves into the windand fall to earth into indifferent ponds

Center of all centers, core of cores,almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet—all this universe, to the furthest starsall beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;your vast shell reaches into endless space,...

Harshness vanished
A sudden softnesshas replaced the meadows' wintry grey
Little rivulets of water changedtheir singing accents
Tendernesses,hesitantly, reach toward the earthfrom space, and country lanes are showingthese unexpected...

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a placeyour sight can knock on, echoing; but herewithin this thick black pelt, your strongest gazewill be absorbed and utterly disappear:just as a raving madman, when nothing elsecan ease him, charges into ...

It would be good to give much thought, beforeyou try to find words for something so lost,for those long childhood afternoons you knewthat vanished so completely —and why
We're still reminded—: sometimes by a rain,but we can no longer say what...

Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the greathollow half-treetrunk, which for generationshas been a trough, renewing in itselfan inch or two of rain,
I satisfymy thirst: taking the water's pristine coolnessinto my whole body through my wris...

She who did not come, wasn't she determinednonetheless to organize and decorate my heart
If we had to exist to become the one we love,what would the heart have to create
Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you arethe center of all my labors a...

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:as I in my spirit burned, see,
I now burn in thee:the wood that long resisted the advancing flameswhich thou kept flaring,
I now am nourishingand bu...