Behind the Blameless Trees
Behind the Blameless Trees - meaning Summary
Fate Hovering Over Love
Rilke depicts fate as a slow, impersonal presence that assembles itself behind tranquil trees. Signs and cries—likened to a soothsayer—hint at an inevitable design, while two lovers remain momentarily ignorant of their part in it. Destiny is portrayed as distant and luminous, a constellation-like phantom that surrounds but does not yet touch them. The poem contrasts immediate warmth of human connection with the patient, unassailable movement of fate.
Read Complete AnalysesBehind the blameless trees old fate slowly builds her mute countenance. Wrinkles grow there . . . What a bird shrieks here springs there like a gasp of warning from a soothsayer's hard mouth. And the soon-to-be lovers smile on each other, not yet knowing farewell, and round about them, like a constellation, their destiny casts its nightly spell. Still to come, it does not reach out to them, it remains a phantom floating in its heavenly course.
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