Rainer Maria Rilke Selected Works, Volume II: Poetry Translated by JB Leishman London: Hogarth Press. 1967.

. From New Poems ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO Though weve not known his unimagined head and what divinity his eyes were showing, his torso like a branching street-lamps glowing, wherein his gaze, only turned down, can shed light still. Or else the breasts insurgency could not be dazzling you, or you discerning in that slight twist of loins a smile returning to where was centered his virility. Or else this stone would not stand so intact beneath the shoulders through-seen cataract and would not glisten like a wild beasts skin; and would not keep from all its contours giving light like a star: for theres no place therein that does not see you. You must change your living. Paris, early summer 1908 CRETAN ARTEMIS Promontory wind: was not her meeting brow like some bright obstacle for you? Counter-wind through which lithe beasts were fleeting, did you form her, moulding to those unconscious breasts of hers that flowing garment like a wild presentiment? While herself, as though she were all-knowing, cool and kirtled, all-intent on the farthest, stormed with nymph and hound, testing what her bow could do, inbound into that hard, high upgirth: sometimes only hailed from isolated huts and, to her fury, dominated by some womans cry for birth. Paris, early summer 1908 SAPPHO TO ALCAEUS FRAGMENT

What, though, would you have to tell me really, what are you to my soul anyway, when your eyes sink down before that nearly uttered something that you never say? Look, man, these are just the things whose saying, till were famed, has so enraptured us. When I think: with you would be decaying that sweet maidenhood which now weve thus, I the seer and all those whove been illumined by me, to a gods delight, borne inviolate, till Mytilene, like an apple-orchard in the night, with the ripening of our breasts is fragrant. Yes, with these breasts too that you have passed over for your fruit-wreaths, wooer there, standing with the countenance downcast. Leave me, so that what you will not spare, to my lyre may come: alls unbegun. This gods no assistance to a pair; when, though, he shall deign to pass through one. THE ANGEL Bowing his head a little, he absolves himself from things that limit and direct, for through his heart moves, mightily erect, the eternal future, that revolves. Before him full of shapes deep heaven stands, and each can call to him with pleading claim. Put nothing into his unburdened hands from your encumbrancy. Unless they came by night for wrestlinger investigating, and crossed like raging furies your threshold and seized on you as though they were creating and breaking you from your retaining mould. Paris, early summer 1906 DEATH EXPERIENCED We know just nothing of this going hence that so excludes us. Weve no grounds at all to greet with plaudits or malevolence the Death whom that mask-mouth of tragical lament disfigures so incredibly. The worlds still full of parts being acted by us.

Till pleasing in them cease to occupy us, Death will act too, although unpleasingly. When, though, you went, there broke upon this scene a shining segment of realities in at the crack you disappeared through: green of real green, real sunshine, real trees. We go on acting. Uttering what exacted such painful learning, gesturing now and then; but your existence and the part you acted, withdrawn now from our play and from our ken, sometimes recur to us like intimations of that reality and of its laws, and we transcend awhile our limitations and act our lives unthinking of applause. Capri, 24 January 1907 In memory of Countess Luise Schwerin, who had died 24 January 1906