Explore "Maidens. II" by Rainer Maria Rilke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Maidens the poets learn from you to tell / How solitary and remote you are, / As night is lighted by one high bright star / They draw light from the distance where you dwell.
For poet you must always maiden be / Even though his eyes the woman in you wake / Wedding brocade your fragile wrists would break, / Mysterious, elusive, from him flee.
Within his garden let him wait alone / Where benches stand expectant in the shade / Within the chamber where the lyre was played / Where he received you as the eternal One.
Go! It grows dark -- your voice and form no more / His senses seek; he now no longer sees / A white robe fluttering under dark beech trees / Along the pathway where it gleamed before.
He loves the long paths where no footfalls ring, / And he loves much the silent chamber where / Like a soft whisper through the quiet air / He hears your voice, far distant, vanishing.
The softly stealing echo comes again / From crowds of men whom, wearily, he shuns; / And many see you there -- so his thought runs -- / And tenderest memories are pierced with pain.