Duino Elegies
“Another, alas, to sing that hidden guilty river-god of the blood!
Her youthful lover, whom she knows from afar: what sense has he of that Lord of Lust who often, roused from solitude— before she could soothe him, and often as though she herself were nothing—ah, roused from what unsounded depths lifts his streaming godhead, inciting the night to infinite uproar.
O the blood’s Neptune, O his terrible trident.
O the dark wind of his breast from the shell’s whorl.
Listen, as the night grows tunnele...d and cavelike. You stars, does not the lover’s delight in his beloved’s face come from you? Does not his passionate oneness with her pure features derive from your celestial fire?
But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother, stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.
Not for your mouth, you who hold him now, did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.
Do you really think your quiet footsteps could have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?
True, you startled his heart; but older terrors rushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.MoreLess
Her youthful lover, whom she knows from afar: what sense has he of that Lord of Lust who often, roused from solitude— before she could soothe him, and often as though she herself were nothing—ah, roused from what unsounded depths lifts his streaming godhead, inciting the night to infinite uproar.
O the blood’s Neptune, O his terrible trident.
O the dark wind of his breast from the shell’s whorl.
Listen, as the night grows tunnele...d and cavelike. You stars, does not the lover’s delight in his beloved’s face come from you? Does not his passionate oneness with her pure features derive from your celestial fire?
But not you, O girl, nor yet his mother, stretched his eyebrows so fierce with expectation.
Not for your mouth, you who hold him now, did his lips ripen into these fervent contours.
Do you really think your quiet footsteps could have so convulsed him, you who move like dawn wind?
True, you startled his heart; but older terrors rushed into him with that first jolt to his emotions.MoreLess
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