Original by Ranier Maria Rilke - Translated by Lore Confino
THE SEVENTH ELEGY
End all your wooing, o voice that's outgrown it!
woo no more! be your signalling cry. Even if you cried as clear as
a bird on the wing, rising high in the surge of season, almost
forgetting he's a needy creature and feeling himself singled out
for springtime to throw into joyous heights, into purest heaven.
No less would you woo, to arouse a mistress, hidden as yet, silent
still, slowly awaking, listening .... warming to
your beckoning call, love-kindled partner to your ardent feelings.
Oh, Spring is aware: there is no place untouched
by annunciation. At first, the small, questioning call, which
pure, affirming day hushes in enhanced stillness. Then up the
steps, song-steps, up to the dream Temple of Future. Then the
trill: fountain in hasty play to catch the impatiently rising,
sparkling jet.
And ahead lies Summer. Not only each and every Summer dawn... not
only as they grow into day, and radiate in their unfolding. Not
only the days which lie gentle about flowers and spread high above
trees, standing tall and mighty.
Not only the devotion of these manifesting forces; not only the
paths, not only meadows at dusk, not only the vibrant clarity
after late storm;
not only approaching sleep and foreknowledge at eventide... but
the nights, the stars of our Earth. Oh! to be dead, know then
evermore, all those stars: how ...how could they be forgotten!
What, if I called my beloved? If she was not alone in
coming...others might rise from crumbling graves, for how could I
limit the call, once called? The Drowned still search for the firm
earth. You children: one single thing known to you now, might
stand for much else. Never believe that Fate means more than the
crowded hours of childhood.
Have you not often overtaken your lover, breathless,
after blissful chase, heading nowhere, into the open. Existence is
glorious! You knew it, maidens, even you, deprived and sunk low in
the worst slums of cities, festering with rot and refuse. For you,
too, had your hour-moments not to be measured in spans of time,
when you had being. Everything. Your veins full of being. Yet, we
quickly forget what our laughing neighbour fails to praise or
covet. We seek what is visible, but the grace of true joy comes to
us only once we transform it inside us, in ourselves.
Beloved, there is no world but the one within us.
Our lives pass in transformation. The world around us dwindles
more and more. Where once stood a solid house, an image now takes
over, a mind picture, created as if real, standing whole in the
brain. The Zeitgeist amasses vast stores of power - a coiled force
it extracts from all.
Temples it knows no more. Such extravagances of the heart we stow
away more secretly. Where there survives one thing, something once
prayed to, something served, knelt to ... it stays whole,
unchanged in the unseen. Many no longer perceive this, blind to
the gain of building within, with pillars and statues far greater.
Every sad turn-about of our world holds those disinherited, who
are left without a past, nor yet possess a future. For even what
is closest to ourselves, lies far from us. But we must not
confuse; it should give us the will to safeguard the still
recognizable form. Once, this stood as manifest knowledge among
men, stood firm in the midst of Fate, amid destruction; withstood
the bewildering not-knowing-where-to, seeming a presence that
stood: a living force which bent stars towards it from secure
Heaven! Angel: I will show you: there! finally secure, saved in
your vision, pillars and pylons and Sphynx; thrusting skywards,
rising grey from our vanishing city, or from one strange to us:
cathedral and spire.
Was it not miracle? Oh, marvel, Angel:
Oh Mighty One, tell it...Say, we achieved all this!
My breath does not suffice for such praise. And for all that, we
have not neglected our own spaces, those bestowed us, our very
own. (How frighteningly vast they must be not to overflow with our
feelings in thousands of years). -One tower was great, was it not?
Angel, it was. - Great, even beside you?
- Chartres was great. And music reached higher still, transcending
us. Even a woman in love, alone by her window at night... would
she not come up to your knee? Do not think that I woo! Angel, even
if I did woo, you would not come. For my cry goes one way only.
Against such powerful current you cannot advance. Like an arm
outstretched is my calling, and its hand, extended and open, ready
to grasp, stays open before you... warding off, giving warning,
wide open - Ungraspable One.