Page:Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918).djvu/109

 The Book of Poverty and Death A watcher of Thy spaces make me,

Make me a listener at Thy stone,

Give to me vision and then wake me

Upon Thy oceans all alone.

Thy rivers' courses let me follow

Where they leap the crags in their flight

And where at dusk in caverns hollow

They croon to music of the night.

Send me far into Thy barren land

Where the snow clouds the wild wind drives,

Where monasteries like gray shrouds stand—

August symbols of unlived lives.

There pilgrims climb slowly one by one,

And behind them a blind man goes:

With him I will walk till day is done

Up the pathway that no one knows

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