That a whole world of lament arose, in whichĪll nature reappeared: forest and valley, More lament than from all lamenting women

His slender staff held out in front of him,Īnd little wings fluttering at his ankles Īnd on his left arm, barely touching it: she.Ī woman so loved that from one lyre there came Those other two, who followed him so softly:Ī traveler’s hood above his shining eyes, They had to be behind him, but their stepsĬompletion), then he could not fail to see them, He said.to himself, they had to be behind him Or the wind inside his cloak, that made the sound. Who were to follow him, up the long path home.īut then, once more, it was just his own steps’ echo, Sometimes it seemed to him as though it reached Would stand, impatient, at the path’s next turn, -īut his hearing, like an odor, stayed behind. His sight would race ahead of him like a dog, His senses felt as though they were split in two: Which had grown into his left arm, like a slip Tight and heavy, out of the failing folds, In large, greedy, unchewed bites his walkĭevoured the path his hands hung at his sides, In front, the slender man in the blue cloak. One pale path unrolled like a strip of cotton. Like the sky on a rainy day above a landscape.Īnd through the gentle, unresisting meadows Spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake Blood welled upĪmong the roots, on its way to the world of men,Īnd in the dark it looked as hard as stone.Īnd forests made of mist. Mitchell has brought off with seeming effortlessness. Few translators of any poet have arrived at the delicate balance of fidelity and originality that Mr. Mitchell is impeccable in his adherence to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right. In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of Rilke’s poetry more accurately and convincingly than has ever been done before. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers. Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. The influence and popularity of Rilke’s poetry in America have never been greater than they are today, more than fifty years after his death. Winner of the 1984 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets

Rilke elegies