Explore "The Ashantee" by Rainer Maria Rilke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris)
No vision of exotic southern countries, / No dancing women, supple, brown and tall / Whirling from out their falling draperies / To melodies that beat a fierce mad call;
No sound of songs that from the hot blood rise, / No langorous, stretching, dusky, velvet maids / Flashing like gleaming weapon their bright eyes, / No swift, wild thrill the quickening blood pervades.
Only mouths widening with a still broad smile / Of comprehension, a strange knowing leer / At white men, at their vanity and guile, / An understanding that fills one with fear.
The beasts in cages much more loyal are, / Restlessly pacing, pacing to and fro, / Dreaming of countries beckoning from afar, / Lands where they roamed in days of long ago.
They burn with an unquenched and smothered fire / Consumed by longings over which they brood, / Oblivious of time, without desire, / Alone and lost in their great solitude.