Slumber Song
Slumber Song - meaning Summary
Intimacy and Anticipatory Loss
Rilke's poem imagines a speaker confronting the possibility of separation from a beloved and worrying whether the other can sleep without their gentle presence. The voice insists on watchful tenderness—soft words, hovering touch—then pictures absence as a lush yet self-contained garden. It balances intimacy with a forward-looking anxiety: love is both nurturing and anxious about its own continuity when the speaker is gone.
Read Complete AnalysesSome day, if I should ever lose you, will you be able then to go to sleep without me softly whispering above you like night air stirring in the linden tree? Without my waking here and watching and saying words as tender as eyelids that come to rest weightlessly upon your breast, upon your sleeping limbs, upon your lips? Without my touching you and leaving you alone with what is yours, like a summer garden that is overflowing with masses of melissa and star-anise?
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