Silent Hour
Whoever weeps somewhere out in the worldWeeps without cause in the worldWeeps over me.
Whoever laughs somewhere out in the nightLaughs without cause in the nightLaughs at me.
Whoever wanders somewhere in the worldWanders in vain in the worldWanders to me.
Whoever dies somewhere in the worldDies without cause in the worldLooks at me.
Words in this poem
- whoever pron.
- Whatever person; any person who; be or she who; any one who; as, he shall be punished, whoever he may be.
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Silent Hour 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, Silent Hour, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/silent-hour.html, id L27726.
Form and metre
Silent Hour is 12 lines in 4 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AA- worldA · worldA · me
- 2 AA- nightA · nightA · me
- 3 AA- worldA · worldA · me
- 4 AA- worldA · worldA · me
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whoever weeps somewhere out in the world | 10 | ˘/˘·/····· |
| Weeps without cause in the world | 7 | ······· |
| Weeps over me. | 4 | ···· |
| Whoever laughs somewhere out in the night | 10 | ˘/˘·/····· |
| Laughs without cause in the night | 7 | ······· |
| Laughs at me. | 3 | ··· |
| Whoever wanders somewhere in the world | 10 | ˘/˘/˘/···· |
| Wanders in vain in the world | 7 | /˘····· |
| Wanders to me. | 4 | /˘·· |
| Whoever dies somewhere in the world | 9 | ˘/˘·/···· |
| Dies without cause in the world | 7 | ······· |
| Looks at me. | 3 | ··· |
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.