Fragment of an Elegyby Rainer Maria RilkeNow shall I praise the cities, those long-surviving
(I watched them in awe) great constellations of earth.
for only in praising is my heart still mine, so violently
do I know the world. And even my lament
turns into a paean before my disconsolate heart.
Let no one say that I don’t love life, the eternal
presence: I pulsate in her; she bears me, she gives me
the spaciousness of this day, the primeval workday
for me to make use of, and over my existence flings,
in her magnanimity, nights that have never been.
Her strong hand is above me, and if she should hold me under,
submerged in fate, I would have to learn how to breathe
down there. Even her most lightly-entrusted mission
would fill me with songs of her; although I suspect
that all she wants is for me to be vibrant as she is.
Once poets resounded over the battlefield; what voice
can outshout the rattle of this metallic age
that is struggling on toward its careening future?
And indeed it hardly requires the call, its own battle-din
roars into song. So, let me stand for a while in front of the transient: not accusing, but once again admiring, marvelling. And if perhaps something founders
before my eyes and stirs me into lament, it is not a reproach. Why shouldn’t more youthful nationsrush past the graveyard of cultures long ago rotten?How pitiful it would be if greatness needed the slightestindulgence. Let him whose soul is no longer startledand transformed by palaces, by gardens’ boldness, by the risingand falling of ancient fountains, by everything held backin paintings or by the infinite thereness of statues -let such a person go out to his daily work, wheregreatness is lying in ambush and someday, at some turn,will leap upon him and force him to fight for his life.