FROM THE LITERARY REMAINS OF COUNT C.W.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Karnak. We'd ridden, dinner quickly done with,
Hélene and I, to get the moonlight view.
The dragoman pulled up: the Avenue -
the Pylon, ah! I'd never felt so one with

the lunar world! (Are you being magnified
within me, greatness? Then beyond control?)
Is travel - seeking? Well, this was a goal
The watchman at the entrance first supplied

the frightening scale. How lowly seemed his station
beside the gate's unchecked self-exaltation!
And then, for a whole life-time's meditation
did not the column bring enough and more?

Ruin vindicated it: it would have been too high
for highest roof. It stood and bore
Egyptian night.
                      The following fellaheen

now fell behind us. To get over this
took time, because it almost stopped the heart
to know that such out-standing formed a part
of that same being we died in. -If I had
a son, I'd send him, when our only care

is finding truth to live by: 'Charles, it's there -
walk through the Pylon, stand and look, my lad.'

Why could it not help us more helpfully?
That we endured it was enough indeed:
you in your travelling dress, the invalid,
and I hermit in my theory.

And yet, the mercy! Can you still recall
that lake round which the granite cats were seated?
Mark-stones (of what?). So chained, as by repeated
spells, into that enchanted rectangle

one felt, that had not five been overturned
along one side (you too were overcome),
they would that moment, cattish, stony, dumb,
have held a court of judgement.

                                             All discerned
was judgement. Here the ban upon the pond,
there on the margin the giant scarabee,
along the walls the epic history
of monarch: judgement. And yet, quite beyond

all comprehension, an acquittal too.
As figure after figure there was filled
with the pure moonlight, the relief, outdrilled
in clearest outline, hollow, through-like, grew

so much receptacle - for nothing less
than what, though never hidden, none could see,
for the world-secret, so essentially
secret, it baffles all secretiveness.

All books keep turning past it: no one ever
read in a book a thing so manifest
(I want a word - how can it be expressed?):
the immeasurable submitted to the measure

of sacrifice. - Look there, oh look: what's keeping
that has not learnt to give itself away?
All things are passing. Help them on their way.
And then your life will not be merely seeping

out through some crack. Remain your whole life long
the conscious giver. Mule and cow, they throng
in close procession to the spot where he,
the god-king, like a stilled child, peaceably

receives and smiles. His mighty sacredness
is never out of breath. He takes and takes:
and yet such mitigation overtakes,
that the papyrus flower by the princess
is often merely clasped, not broken. -
                                                  Here

all ways of sacrifice abruptly end,
the Sabbath starts, the long weeks comprehend
its mind no longer. Man and beast appear

to keep at times some gains from the god's eyes.
Profit, though difficult, can be secured;
one tries and tries, the earth can be procured, -
yet who but gives the price gives up the prize.