The Poet
You Hour! From me you ever take your flight,Your swift wings wound me as they whir along;Without you void would be my day and night,Without you I'll not capture my great song.
I have no earthly spot where I can live,I have no love, I have no household fane,And all the things to which myself I giveImpoverish me with richness they attain.
Words in this poem
- fane n.
- A temple; a place consecrated to religion; a church. [L. fanum a place dedicated to some deity, a sanctuary, fr. fari to speak. See Fame.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Poet 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 Poet, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/the-poet.html, id L27755.
Form and metre
The Poet is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 ABAB flightA · alongB · nightA · songB
- 2 ABAB liveA · faneB · giveA · attainB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| You Hour! From me you ever take your flight, | 10 | ·/···/˘··· |
| Your swift wings wound me as they whir along; | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Without you void would be my day and night, | 10 | ·········· |
| Without you I'll not capture my great song. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| I have no earthly spot where I can live, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| I have no love, I have no household fane, | 10 | ·······/·· |
| And all the things to which myself I give | 10 | ·······/·· |
| Impoverish me with richness they attain. | 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.