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by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
Translation © by Anita Barrows and by Joanna Macy

Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich...
Language: German (Deutsch) 
Our translations:  ENG FRE
Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich an
mit klarem, metallenem Schlag:
mir zittern die Sinne. Ich fühle: ich kann -
und ich fasse den plastischen Tag.

Nichts war [noch]1 vollendet, eh ich es erschaut,
ein jedes Werden stand still.
Meine Blicke sind reif, und wie eine Braut
kommt jedem das Ding, das er will.

Nichts ist mir zu klein, und ich lieb es trotzdem
und mal' es auf Goldgrund und groß,
und halte es hoch, und ich weiß nicht wem
löst es die Seele los...

S. Ebel sets stanzas 1-2

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke, kommentierte Ausgabe in vier Bänden, Band 1 Gedichte 1895 bis 1910, herausgegeben von Manfred Engel und Ulrich Fülleborn, Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1996, page 157.

1 Omitted by Ebel.

Text Authorship:

  • by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), "Da neigt sich die Stunde", written 1899, appears in Das Stundenbuch, in 1. Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben , no. 1, first published 1905

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • ENG English (Walter A. Aue) , "The hour is turning", copyright © 2008, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , "Alors l'heure se penche et me touche", copyright © 2012, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Sharon Krebs [Senior Associate Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 87

The hour is striking so close above me
 (Sung text for setting by B. Mehldau)
 Matches base text
Language: English  after the German (Deutsch) 
The hour is striking so close above me
 [ ... ]
This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.

Composition:

    Set to music by Brad Mehldau (b. 1970), "The hour is striking so close above me", first performed 2005 [ voice and piano ], from Seven Songs from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, no. 2

Text Authorship:

  • by Anita Barrows , copyright ©
  • by Joanna Macy , copyright ©

Based on:

  • a text in German (Deutsch) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926), "Da neigt sich die Stunde", written 1899, appears in Das Stundenbuch, in 1. Das Buch vom mönchischen Leben , no. 1, first published 1905
    • Go to the text page.

Go to the general single-text view

This text was added to the website: 2023-08-19
Line count: 10
Word count: 67

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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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