The Neighbour
Strange violin! Dost thou follow me?In many foreign cities, far away,Thy lone voice spoke to me like memory.Do hundreds play thee, or does but one play?
Are there in all great cities tempest-tossedMen who would seek the rivers but for thee,
Who, but for thee, would be forever lost?Why drifts thy lonely voice always to me?Why am I the neighbour alwaysOf those who force to sing thy trembling strings?Life is more heavy--thy song says--Than the vast, heavy burden of all things.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- spoke n.
- The radius or ray of a wheel; one of the small bars which are inserted in the hub, or nave, and which serve to support the rim or felly. [OE. spoke, spake, AS, spaca; akin to D. speek, LG. speke, OHG. speihha, G. speiche. sq. root170. Cf. Spike a nail.]
- neighbour v. i.
- To dwell in the vicinity; to be a neighbor, or in the neighborhood; to be near.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Neighbour 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 Neighbour, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/the-neighbour.html, id L27733.
Form and metre
The Neighbour is 12 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
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 meA · awayB · memory · playB
- 2 CA tossedC · theeA
- 3 CA-D-D lostC · meA · always · stringsD · says · thingsD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Strange violin! Dost thou follow me? | 9 | ·˘˘/··/˘· |
| In many foreign cities, far away, | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Thy lone voice spoke to me like memory. | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Do hundreds play thee, or does but one play? | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Are there in all great cities tempest-tossed | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Men who would seek the rivers but for thee, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Who, but for thee, would be forever lost? | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Why drifts thy lonely voice always to me? | 10 | ···/˘·/··· |
| Why am I the neighbour always | 8 | ····/˘/· |
| Of those who force to sing thy trembling strings? | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Life is more heavy--thy song says-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Than the vast, heavy burden of all things. | 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.