Observations placeholder
Rilke, Rainer Maria - 31 Seventh Elegy
Identifier
000188
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The Roses of Heliogabalus - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
A description of the experience
Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke [The Sixth Elegy]
Nowhere, beloved, will world be, but within.
Our life passes in change.
And ever-shrinking the outer diminishes.
Where there was once a permanent house,
some conceptual structure springs up, athwart us,
as fully at home among concepts, as if it still stood in the brain.
Vast reservoirs of power are created by the spirit of the age,
formless, like the tense yearning gained from all things.
Temples are no longer known.
Those extravagances of the heart we keep, more secretly.
Yes, where even one survives,
a single thing once prayed to, served, knelt before –
it stands, as it is, already there in the invisible.
Many no longer see it, but lose the chance to build it
inside themselves now, with columns, and statues, grander!