Analysis of Telling You All

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)



Telling you all would take too long.
Besides, we read in the Bible
how the good is harmful
and how misfortune is good.

Let's invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we'll know it soon enough.

And yet towards evening,
when his memory is persistent,
one belated curiousity
stops him before the mirror.

We don't know if he is frightened.
But he stays, he is engrossed,
and, facing his reflection,
transports himself somewhere else.


Scheme XAAB XXXX XXBX XXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 10111111 01110010 101110 0101011 101101 110010100 1101101 111101 010110 111001010 10101 1101010 11111110 1111101 0101010 010111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 460
Words 82
Sentences 7
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 92
Words per stanza (avg) 20
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 24, 2023

25 sec read
429

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets", writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. more…

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