Explore "I Love my Life's Dark Hours" by Rainer Maria Rilke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I love my life's dark hours / In which my senses quicken and grow deep, / While, as from faint incense of faded flowers / Or letters old, I magically steep / Myself in days gone by: again I give / Myself unto the past: -- again I live.
Out of my dark hours wisdom dawns apace, / Infinite Life unrolls its boundless space.
Then I am shaken as a sweeping storm / Shakes a ripe tree that grows above a grave / 'Round whose cold clay the roots twine fast and warm -- / And Youth's fair visions that glowed bright and brave, / Dreams that were closely cherished and for long, / Are lost once more in sadness and in song.