Analysis of Sacrifice

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



How my body blooms from every vein
more fragrantly, since you appeard to me;
look, I walk slimmer now and straighter,
and all you do is wait-:who are you then?

Look: I feel how I'm moving away,
how I'm shedding my old life, leaf by leaf.
Only your smile spreads like sheer stars
over you and, soon now, over me.

Whatever shines through my childhood years
still nameless and gleaming like water,
I will name after you at the altar,
which is blazing brightly from your hair
and braided gently with your breasts.

Translated by Edward Snow


Scheme XABX XXXA XBBXX X
Poetic Form
Metre 1110111001 1111111 111101010 0111111111 111111001 1110111111 10111111 101011101 1011111 110010110 1111011010 111010111 01010111 0101101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 530
Words 100
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 5, 1
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 105
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

30 sec read
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Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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