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Sonnets to Orpheus

Book by Rainer Maria Rilke · 7 quotes · Orpheus, Divinity, Beauty

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Sonnets to Orpheus Quotes

“There the tree rises. Oh pure surpassing! Oh Orpheus sings! Oh great tree of sound! And all is silent, And from this silence arise New beginnings, intimations, changings. From the stillness animals throng, out of the clear Snapping forest of lair and nest; And thus they are stealthy not from cunning Not from fear But to hear. And in their hearts the howling, the cry, The stag-call seem too little. And where before Was but the rudest shelter to receive these, A refuge fashioned out of darkest longing Entered, tremulo, the doorpost aquiver, - There You have fashioned them a temple for their hearing.”

“Go not to bed leaving bread and milk behind On the table: these summon the dead. But He, the exorcist, mingles Under the mildness of our eyelids Their spectres amongst all else that we see; And the spells from fumitory of earth smoke and of rue Are as explicit to Him as the clearest logical connection. Nothing can derange for Him the truly formed image, Be it of graves, be it of rooms, Singing of rings, of spangles, of urns.”

“It is all about praising. Created to praise, his heart is a winepress destined to break, that makes for us an eternal wine. His voice never chokes with dust when words for the sacred come through. All becomes vineyard. All becomes grape, ripening in the southland of his being. Nothing, not even the rot in royal tombs, or the shadow cast by a god, gives the lie to his praising. He is ever the messenger, venturing far through the doors of the dead, bearing a bowl of fresh-picked fruit.”