The Bride
Call me, Beloved! Call aloud to me!Thy bride her vigil at the window keeps;The evening wanes to dusk, the dimness creepsDown empty alleys of the old plane-tree.
O! Let thy voice enfold me close about,Or from this dark house, lonely and remote,Through deep blue gardens where gray shadows floatI will pour forth my soul with hands stretched out ...
Words in this poem
- aloud adv.
- With a loud voice, or great noise; loudly; audibly. [Pref. a- + loud.]
- vigil n.
- Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch. [OE. vigile, L. vigilia, from vigil awake, watchful, probably akin to E. wake: cf. F. vigile. See Wake, v. i., and cf. Reveille, Surveillance, Vedette, Vegetable]
- enfold v. t.
- To infold. See Infold.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Bride 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, The Bride, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/the-bride.html, id L27737.
Form and metre
The Bride is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. 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 ABBA meA · keepsB · creepsB · treeA
- 2 ABBA aboutA · remoteB · floatB · outA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Call me, Beloved! Call aloud to me! | 10 | ··˘/˘·˘/·· |
| Thy bride her vigil at the window keeps; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The evening wanes to dusk, the dimness creeps | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Down empty alleys of the old plane-tree. | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| O! Let thy voice enfold me close about, | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| Or from this dark house, lonely and remote, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Through deep blue gardens where gray shadows float | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| I will pour forth my soul with hands stretched out ... | 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.