Initiation
Whosoever thou art! Out in the evening roam,Out from thy room thou know'st in every part,And far in the dim distance leave thy home,Whosoever thou art.Lift thine eyes which lingering seeThe shadows on the foot-worn threshold fall,Lift thine eyes slowly to the great dark treeThat stands against heaven, solitary, tall,And thou hast visioned Life, its meanings riseLike words that in the silence clearer grow;As they unfold before thy will to knowGently withdraw thine eyes--
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- visioned a.
- Having the power of seeing visions; inspired; also, seen in visions. Shelley.
- clearer n.
- One who, or that which, clears.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Initiation 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, Initiation, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/initiation.html, id L27732.
Form and metre
Initiation is 12 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCDEFFE. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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 ABABCDCDEFFE roamA · partB · homeA · artB · seeC · fallD · treeC · tallD · riseE · growF · knowF · eyesE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whosoever thou art! Out in the evening roam, | 12 | ·˘/˘·····/˘· |
| Out from thy room thou know'st in every part, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And far in the dim distance leave thy home, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Whosoever thou art. | 6 | ·˘/˘·· |
| Lift thine eyes which lingering see | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| The shadows on the foot-worn threshold fall, | 10 | ·/·····/·· |
| Lift thine eyes slowly to the great dark tree | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| That stands against heaven, solitary, tall, | 10 | ····//˘·˘· |
| And thou hast visioned Life, its meanings rise | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Like words that in the silence clearer grow; | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| As they unfold before thy will to know | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Gently withdraw thine eyes-- | 6 | /˘˘/·· |
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.