Moonlight Night
South-German night! the ripe moon hangs aboveWeaving enchantment o'er the shadowy lea.From the old tower the hours fall heavilyInto the dark as though into the sea--A rustle, a call of night-watch in the grove,Then for a while void silence fills the air;And then a violin (from God knows where)Awakes and slowly sings: Oh Love ... Oh Love ...
Words in this poem
- rustle v. i.
- To make a quick succession of small sounds, like the rubbing or moving of silk cloth or dry leaves. [AS. hristlan to rustle; or cf. Sw. rusta to stir, make a riot, or E. rush, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moonlight Night 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, Moonlight Night, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/moonlight-night.html, id L27739.
Form and metre
Moonlight Night is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
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 AB-B-CCA aboveA · leaB · heavily · seaB · grove · airC · whereC · loveA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| South-German night! the ripe moon hangs above | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Weaving enchantment o'er the shadowy lea. | 10 | /˘˘/˘··/˘· |
| From the old tower the hours fall heavily | 11 | ···/·/˘·/˘˘ |
| Into the dark as though into the sea-- | 10 | ·········· |
| A rustle, a call of night-watch in the grove, | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| Then for a while void silence fills the air; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And then a violin (from God knows where) | 10 | ···˘˘/···· |
| Awakes and slowly sings: Oh Love ... Oh Love ... | 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.