Lament
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Everything is far
and long gone by.
I think that the star
glittering above me
has been dead for a million years.
I think there were tears
in the car I heard pass
and something terrible was said.
A clock has stopped striking in the house
across the road...
When did it start?...
I would like to step out of my heart
an go walking beneath the enormous sky.
I would like to pray.
And surely of all the stars that perished
long ago,
one still exists.
I think that I know
which one it is--
which one, at the end of its beam in the sky,
stands like a white city...
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 30, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 468 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABACDEFGHIJJBKLMNMOBC |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 546 |
Words | 114 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 21 |
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"Lament" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/29686/lament>.
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