Lament
Rainer Maria Rike

Oh! All things are long and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years...in the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
A clock just struck within some house remote
Which house? --I long to still my beating heart.
Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray...
Of all the stars there must be far away
A single star which exists apart.
And I believe that I should know the one
Which has alone endured and which alone
Like white city that all space commands 
At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.


Rainer Maria Rika was born on December 4, 1875,
in Prague. He authored numerous works in prose and
poetry. He died on December 29, 1926.