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Rilke, Rainer Maria - 26 Fifth Elegy
Identifier
007947
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Duino Elegies – Rainer Maria Rilke [The Fifth Elegy]
Angel: if there were a place we know nothing of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers revealed
what here they could never master, their high daring
figures of heart’s flight,
their towers of desire, their ladders,
long since standing where there was no ground, leaning,
trembling, on each other – and mastered them,
in front of the circle of watchers, the countless, soundless dead:
Would these not fling their last, ever-saved,
ever-hidden, unknown to us, eternally
valid coins of happiness in front of the finally
truly smiling pair on the silent
carpet?