 |
 | ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
 |
 |
| Rainer Maria Rilke |
Rainer Maria Rilke was born in Prague on December 4, 1875, the only child of an unhappy marriage. Rilke's childhood was... More > |
|
 |
 |
 |
Carpe Diem |
 |
 |
A Shropshire Lad, II by A. E. Housman |
 |
 |
 |
As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world's a stage] by William Shakespeare |
 |
 |
 |
Three Airs for the Beggar’s Opera, Air XXII by John Gay |
 |
 |
 |
Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III [O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?] by William Shakespeare |
 |
 |
 |
A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
 |
 |
 |
A Song On the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz |
 |
 |
 |
Another Song [Are they shadows that we see?] by Samuel Daniel |
 |
 |
 |
Barter by Sara Teasdale |
 |
 |
 |
Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire |
 |
 |
 |
Carpe Diem by Robert Frost |
 |
 |
 |
Carpe Diem: Poems for Making the Most of Time |
 |
 |
 |
Daphnis and Chloe by Haniel Long |
 |
 |
 |
Dreams by Langston Hughes |
 |
 |
 |
First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay |
 |
 |
 |
I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl (443) by Emily Dickinson |
 |
 |
 |
If— by Rudyard Kipling |
 |
 |
 |
Ithaka by C. P. Cavafy |
 |
 |
 |
Live Blindly and Upon the Hour by Trumbull Stickney |
 |
 |
 |
My life closed twice before its close (96) by Emily Dickinson |
 |
 |
 |
Nothing Twice by Wislawa Szymborska |
 |
 |
 |
O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman |
 |
 |
 |
O, Gather Me the Rose by William Ernest Henley |
 |
 |
 |
Song to Celia by Ben Jonson |
 |
 |
 |
The City by C. P. Cavafy |
 |
 |
 |
The Layers by Stanley Kunitz |
 |
 |
 |
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost |
 |
 |
 |
To be alive by Gregory Orr |
 |
 |
 |
To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell |
 |
 |
 |
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick |
 |
 |
 |
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam by Ernest Dowson |
 |
 |
 |
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths by Philip James Bailey |
 |
 |
 |
When I consider every thing that grows (Sonnet 15) by William Shakespeare |
 |
 |
 |
You Can't Have It All by Barbara Ras |
 |
|
|
 |
| Archaic Torso of Apollo
|
|
by Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Stephen Mitchell |
|
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
|
Share
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
E-mail to Friend
|
From Ahead of All Parting: Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell and published by Modern Library. © 1995 by Stephen Mitchell. Used with permission. All rights reserved. |
|
|