Dove, That Stayed Outside (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Death or dying, Separation, Birds, Life, philosophy of, Life and death, Animals, Balls
The Poem
“Dove, That Stayed Outside” (or, as translator Stephen Mitchell titles it, “Dove That Ventured Outside”) is a short poem of twelve lines divided into three stanzas of four lines each. The meter of the original poem is predominantly dactylic, and the German rhymes aabb, cdcd, eeff. The poem is graphically striking, because it is divided vertically down its center by a break in the text, a blank space that runs through the middle of all three stanzas. This blank space reinforces the central theme of the poem, which is separation. The two...
[The entire page is 1492 words long]
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