Explore "The Boy" by Rainer Maria Rilke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I wish I might become like one of these / Who, in the night on horses wild astride, / With torches flaming out like loosened hair / On to the chase through the great swift wind ride. / I wish to stand as on a boat and dare / The sweeping storm, mighty, like flag unrolled / In darkness but with helmet made of gold / That shimmers restlessly. And in a row, / Behind me in the dark, ten men that glow / With helmets that are restless, too, like mine, / Now old and dull, now clear as glass they shine. / One stands by me and blows a blast apace / On his great flashing trumpet and the sound / Shrieks through the vast black solitude around / Through which, as through a wild mad dream we race. / The houses fall behind us on their knees, / Before us bend the streets and them we gain, / The great squares yieled to us and them we seize -- / And on our steeds rush like the roar of rain.