By Rainer Maria Rilke

Everything beckons to us to perceive it,
murmurs at every turn ‘Remember me!’
A day we passed, too busy to receive it,
will yet unlock us all its treasury.
Who shall compute our harvest? Who shall bar
us from the former years, the long departed?
What have we learnt from living since we started,
except to find in others what we are?
Except to re-enkindle commonplace?
O house, O sloping field, O setting sun!
Your features form into a face, you run,
you cling to us, returning our embrace!
One space spreads through all creatures equally-
Inner-world-space. Birds quietly flying go
flying through us. Oh, I that want to grow,
the tree I look outside at grows in me!
It stands in me, that house I look for still,
in me that shelter I have not possessed.
I, the now well-beloved: on my breast
this fair world’s image clings and weeps her fill.