Before Summer Rain by Rainer Maria Rilke

"When the chickens or dogs wander away, people know enough to search for them, but when the heart wanders away, they don't.

The Way of Learning is nothing other than this: searching for the heart that has wandered away." ~Confucious

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BEFORE SUMMER RAIN

By Rainer Maria Rilke

From:  "The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke", page 35

 

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

 

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       "Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields...." ~Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

 

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"Isn't it time to turn your heart into a temple of fire?" ~Rumi

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"The heart never becomes wrinkled." ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

 

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