Looking Back

Remembrance
By Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)

1.  

YOU wait, with memories drifting,   
For the something that made life blessed,   
The mighty, the rare, the uplifting,   
The awaking of stones, the rifting   
That opened deeps unguessed.           

The books in your shelves are staring   
Golden and brown, as you muse   
On the lands you crossed in your faring,   
On pictures, on visions unsparing   
Of women you had to lose.           

All at once it comes back: now you know!   
Trembling you rise, all aware   
Of a year once long ago   
With its grandeur and fear and prayer.

                    --Margarete Münsterberg, ed., trans.  A Harvest of German Verse.  1916.


I wanted to save this.  Mr. Rilke is new to me and I wish to look deeper into his work.