Share:
  Guess poet | Poets | Poets timeline | Isles | Contacts

Rainer Maria Rilke - The StyliteRainer Maria Rilke - The Stylite
Work rating: Low


He nearly drowned in hermit-seeking seas Of visitors those voids he had allowed To suck his soul damned sycophantic fleas! Wrenching himself from the besieging crowd, He gripped with clammy hands and bulbous knees And climbed a column standing idle there. Alone, on top of it, his spirit soared, And once again he started to compare His weakness with the strength that is the Lord. No end to it: as fast as he could praise The Other grew, and overtopped it all. Rustics, stopping near the foot to gaze, Would see a lonely madman, high and small, In lively conversation with the sky. The howls came plunging down for them to hear When rainy weather screened him from their eyes. He seemed to pray by shouting in their ears And yet he didn`t realize for years That, all this while, his following had grown. Around the column, seating was set out For pious tourist, amateur devout The column had more glamour than a throne. But as he battled with his daily fiends, Crying aloud, so mortified by them, Despairing of a way to make them go, The maggots, which had fattened up of late, Dropped from his wounds upon the foremost row Of those by whom he felt himself demeaned: There to festoon the princely diadem And pupate in the velvet robes of state.
Source

The script ran 0.004 seconds.