Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918)/The Woman who Loves

by Rainer Maria Rilke

THE WOMAN WHO LOVES

 

Ah yes! I long for you. To you I glide
And lose myself—for to you I belong.
The hope that hitherto I have denied
Imperious comes to me as from your side
Serious, unfaltering and swift and strong.

 

Those times: the times when I was quite alone
By memories wrapt that whispered to me low,
My silence was the quiet of a stone
Over which rippling murmuring waters flow.

 

But in these weeks of the awakening Spring
Something within me has been freed—something
That in the past dark years unconscious lay,
Which rises now within me and commands
And gives my poor warm life into your hands
Who know not what I was that Yesterday.