Songs

Bei dir ist es traut (1910)

Part of a series or song cycle:

Bei dir ist es traut

Rainer Maria Rilke

Bei dir ist es traut:

Zage Uhren schlagen

wie aus weiten Tagen.

Komm mir ein Liebes sagen -

aber nur nicht laut.

Ein Tor geht irgendwo

draussen im Blütentreiben.

Der Abend horcht an den Scheiben.

Lass uns leise bleiben:

Keiner weiss uns so.

I feel warm and close with you

English Translation © Richard Stokes

I feel warm and close with you:

clocks strike hesitantly,

like they did in distant days.

Say something loving to me -

but not aloud.

A gate opens somewhere

out in the burgeoning.

Evening listens at the window-panes.

Let us stay quiet,

no one knows us thus.

Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder (Faber, 2005)

Composer

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was a Viennese-born composer, author, editor and socialite. She composed at least 17 songs for voice and piano. She was married to Gustav Mahler.

Read her full Wikipedia article here.

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Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. He is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets".He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical". His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.

Taken from Wikipedia. Read more here.

Read some of Rilke's work here, on Poetry Foundation.

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