When he played his lyre to the shades it was his first awareness of the everlasting praise.
When he had eaten poppies with the dead his ear was new attuned to every smallest sound.
Understand: though an image in a pool confuses, voices are mild and immortal when they rebound.
Rainer Maria Rilke ‘Eurydice’ is from Virgil’s Fourth Georgic. ‘Orpheus’ is one in Rainer Maria Rilke’s sequence of Orpheus Sonnets. Translations are by the Editor.
From Orpheus Sonnets. Translation by the Editor.