I Love My Life's Dark Hours
I love my life's dark hoursIn which my senses quicken and grow deep,While, as from faint incense of faded flowersOr letters old, I magically steepMyself in days gone by: again I giveMyself unto the past:--again I live.
Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace,Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space ...
Then I am shaken as a sweeping stormShakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave'Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm--And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave,Dreams that were closely cherished and for long,Are lost once more in sadness and in song.
Words in this poem
- magically adv.
- In a magical manner; by magic, or as if by magic.
- apace adv.
- With a quick pace; quick; fast; speedily. [Pref. a- + pace. OE. a pas at a walk, in which a is the article. See Pace.]
- sadness n.
- Heaviness; firmness.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
I Love My Life's Dark Hours is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, translated by Jessie Lemont, with an introduction by H.T. (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1918), Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, the Jessie Lemont translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rainer Maria Rilke, I Love My Life's Dark Hours, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/i-love-my-lifes-dark-hours.html, id L27766.
Form and metre
I Love My Life's Dark Hours is 14 lines in 3 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABABCC, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABCC hoursA · deepB · flowersA · steepB · giveC · liveC
- 2 AA apaceA · spaceA
- 3 ABABCC stormA · graveB · warmA · braveB · longC · songC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I love my life's dark hours | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| In which my senses quicken and grow deep, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| While, as from faint incense of faded flowers | 11 | ····˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Or letters old, I magically steep | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘˘· |
| Myself in days gone by: again I give | 10 | ·/····˘/·· |
| Myself unto the past:--again I live. | 10 | ·/····˘/·· |
| Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace, | 10 | ····//˘·˘/ |
| Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space ... | 10 | /˘˘····/˘· |
| Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave | 10 | ·········· |
| 'Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm-- | 10 | ·········· |
| And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Dreams that were closely cherished and for long, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Are lost once more in sadness and in song. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.