From Sonnets to Orpheus, Part 1, Number 19

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Like cloud-shapes, torn and molded by the wind, 
the world is being changed, and rapidly. 
What comes into the Fullness 
falls toward the Ancient Source, and gratefully.
 
Soaring over the tumult and the change, 
like some great bird, borne further and higher, 
intones the Song that pierced the dawn 
on that First Day, O God of the lyre. 
 
No one ought ever love their suffering, 
but no one ever loves without its pain; 
and as we die, we come to wondering 
 
if there was something we could not yet see— 
that winged Thing that merges with Earth’s suffering 
to make us what we otherwise would never be. 

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