Page:Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1918).djvu/36

 In The Book of Hours, Rilke withdraws from the world not from weariness but weighed down under the manifold conflicting visions. As the prophet who would bring to the world a great possession must go forth into the desert to be alone until the kingdom comes to him from within, so the poet must leave the world in order to gain the deeper understanding, to be face to face with God. The mood of Das Stunden-Buch is this mood of being face to face with God; it elevates these poems to prayer, profound prayer of doubt and despair, exalted prayer of reconciliation and triumph.

The Book of Hours contains three parts written at different periods in the poet's life: The Book of a Monk's Life (1899); The Book of Pilgrimage (1901), and The Book of Poverty and Death (1903), although the entire volume was not published until several years later. The Book of Hours glows with a mystic fervour to know God, to be near him. In this desire to approach the Nameless One, the young Brother in The Book of a Monk's Life builds up about God parables, images and legends reminiscent of those of the 17th century Angelus Silesius, but sustained by a more pregnant language because exalted by a more xxviii