Classic Love Poems
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Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a German poet who is considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest poets in the German language. He made his poetic debut at the age of nineteen with Leben und Lieder (1894), written in the conventional style of Heinrich Heine. Rilke wrote in both rhymed, metered verse and a highly lyrical prose. The Book of Hours: The Book of Monastic Life, written while traveling with Lou Andreas-Salomé and her husband in Russia, expresses Rilke’s deep spiritual yearning. His most famous major works, Sonnets to Orpheus, containing 55 entire sonnets, and the Duino Elegies were completed in 1922. Rilke also wrote more than 400 poems in French.
“After the Masked Ball”
by Charles Chaplin
love my solitude.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
The Lovers
See how in their veins all becomes spirit:
into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.
Thirsters, and they receive drink,
watchers, and see: they receive sight.
Let them into one another sink
so as to endure each other outright.
Blank Joy
She who did not come, wasn’t she determined
nonetheless 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 are
the center of all my labors and my loves.
If I’ve wept for you so much, it’s because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.
To Say Before Going to Sleep
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
have someone to sit by and be with.
I would like to cradle you and softly sing,
be your companion while you sleep or wake.
I would like to be the only person
in the house who knew: the night outside was cold.
And would like to listen to you
and outside to the world and to the woods.
The clocks are striking, calling to each other,
and one can see right to the edge of time.
Outside the house a strange man is afoot
and a strange dog barks, wakened from his sleep.
Beyond that there is silence.
My eyes rest upon your face wide-open;
and they hold you gently, letting you go
when something in the dark begins to move.
Again and Again
Again and again,
however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there,
with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
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