Sonnets to Orpheus Quotes

“Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

- Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

- Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Please don’t, above all,
plant me in your heart.

I grow too quick.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Amid these fading and decaying things, be the glass that rings out as it's breaking.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“when you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
on the table: it attracts the dead.

[sonnet 6]”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Only he whose bright lyre
has sounded in shadows
may, looking onward, restore
his infinite praise.

Only he who has eaten
poppies with the dead
will not lose ever again
the gentlest chord.

Though the image upon the pool
often grows dim:
Know and be still.

Inside the Double World
all voices become
eternally mild.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“In spite of all the farmer's work and worry, he can't reach down to where the seed is slowly transmuted into summer. The earth bestows.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“The trees which you planted as a child
Have long since grown too heavy; you do not deceive them.
But the winds ... but the spaces ...
Raise no monument. For it is the roses
Which salute Him year by year with their petals.
This, you see, is Orpheus”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII

Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.

Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.

Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?

Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“It is all about praising.
Created to praise, his heart
is a winepress destined to break,
that makes for us an eternal wine.

His voice never chokes with dust
when words for the sacred come through.
All becomes vineyard. All becomes grape,
ripening in the southland of his being.

Nothing, not even the rot
in royal tombs, or the shadow cast by a god,
gives the lie to his praising.

He is ever the messenger,
venturing far through the doors of the dead,
bearing a bowl of fresh-picked fruit.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Your smile more enduring, when it illuminates your sorrow.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“In this vast night, be the magic power
at your senses’ intersection,
the meaning of their strange encounter.

And if the earthly has forgotten
you, say to the still earth: I flow.
To the rushing water speak: I am.

from “Sonnet 29”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus

“How the bird cry seizes us …
The creation once, of any cry.
But even the children, playing in the open air,
Cry out, beyond all true cries.

Chance cries out. Into the spaces between
All of these vastnesses of a world, (where the broken
Bird cry insinuates itself, like men in dreams -)
They drive and pound in their screeching, like wedges.

So where on earth are we then? We break freer and freer,
Hunting, like kites which have snapped loose
Half way up, with laughing borders,

Shredded by the wind. – Array all those who cry out,
Oh god who sings! that they may awaken with a roar,
Bearing upon them as a current the head and the lyre.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Call me to you when the hour turns away,
The one which always opposes you:
It is as close to you as a dog’s face
But then it wavers, forever eluding you”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Every blessed space is both child and grandchild of dissolution,
for that which is stored up drains away. And Daphne, in her metamorphosis,
as she feels herself becoming a laurel, wishes that you evanesce into the wind.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Just as the sheet nearest to hand takes from a master
The true hasty stroke, just so
The mirror often takes into itself
The sole, the divine laugh of a girl,

As she experiences the morning, alone -
Or in the radiance of attendant candlelight.
And later, when this visage actually breathes,
Gives back only a reflection.

What eyes have not upon occasion gazed
Into the long-smoking embers that fade in the fire:
Life-glimpses, lost forever?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“And often the reflection in the pool
Dissolves us asunder:
Know the image!”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Suffering is not discerned,
neither has love been learned,
and what removes us in death,
nothing unveils.
Only the song's high breath
hallows and hails.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“We are the driven ones.
But the march of time
Is but a trifle
In our perpetual enduring.

All this hastening
Will soon be done;
For only lingering
Can consecrate our being.

Young men, don’t throw
Your energies into tests of
Speed or aerial flight.

Know that all is in repose:
The darkness, the brilliantly luminous,
The flower, the book”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“All that we have gained, the machine threatens-
once a tool assumes a force of its own.
Instead of letting us get used to mastery, for buildings more severe it cuts the stone.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“And if what is of earth forgets you,
Say to that earth of silence: I flow.
Say to the rushing waters: I am.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Oh arrive and leave. You were still half a child,
Completing a dancing pose for but a moment,
The pure form of a star constellation, which is
One of the ways in which we overcome the mindless random order

Of Nature, also just for a moment. For it was only when Orpheus sang
That Nature awoke and heard, was quickened in alertness.
Though far away in time, this stirred you. And you were somewhat
Surprised that a tree considered so slowly and hesitated

To join with you in hearing it.
You sensed the very place where the lyre
Raised itself aloft -; the mid-point which has never been heard.

For you ventured your beautiful steps
And you hoped, one day in holy celebration
To alter the course and countenance of your friend.
(Her friend is himself.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Does time really exist, time the destroyer?
When will it break down the castle into mere fragments?
When will this heart which has always been in the service of the gods
Be governed by the Creator, the Demiurge?

Are we really so desperately fragile
As Fate would wish to make us?
Is childhood, which is so deep, so full of promise,
Later stilled at its root?

Oh, the spectre of perishability,
How it infiltrates and passes through the innocently receptive,
As if it were smoke!

And we, we who are drifting,
We still rank as a divine rite
Amongst those lasting Powers.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“We made but rough sketches of our gods at first,
They who were continually overthrown by sullen Fate.
But still, they were the Immortal Ones. And look, we may yet
Come to hear of He who will finally hear us.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“But the rage passes and leaves no trace behind.
The curves of flight through the air, and those that ply them,
Perhaps none is without purpose. But only as memory.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Oh my heart, sing of the gardens which you have never known!
Those which are frozen in glass, clear, unreachable.
Water and roses of Isfahan, or Shiraz,
Give blessed song, give praise equal to none.

Oh my heart, give evidence that they have not spared you,
And that it is you who are intended, and it is for you that they ripen their figs.
That it is you who ply between their blossoming boughs,
Like a face, in the rousing winds.

Avoid the mistake of imagining some deprivation,
For the decision has been taken: to be!
Silk thread, weave your way into the fabric!

Whatever the image with which you have become one
(even if it be but a moment from a life of pain),
Feel that the whole carpet, so worthy of praise, is intended!”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

“Fate measures us perhaps with the breadth of being,
Which is strange to us;
Just think how much distance there is between a girl and a man
When she is avoiding him or thinking of him.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus