German · New Poems

Der Schwan

The Swan

12 lines · 12 notes

Tap a line to open its words. The mark beside it plays it.

1
This toil, of moving on through what is still undone,
Diesethisdieser · determiner, nominative, feminine, singulardepends on Mühsal
MühsaltoilMühsal · noun, nominative, feminine, singularsubject of gleicht
durchthroughdurch · prepositiondepends on Mühsal
nochstillnoch · adverbdepends on Ungetanes
Ungetaneswhat is undoneUngetane · noun, accusative, neuter, singulardepends on durch
WordA noun for burdensome toil Mühsal means 'toil, hardship, drudgery', built on Mühe, 'effort, trouble', with the suffix -sal, which marks something burdensome and lasting rather than a single task. The sentence it opens runs to gleicht in the next stanza.
GrammarA participle turned into a noun ungetan, 'undone, not yet done', combines getan, the participle of tun, 'to do', with the negating prefix un-. Capitalized, das Ungetane becomes a noun, 'that which is undone'. After durch noch it stands in the accusative.
2
heavily and as if bound,
Grammarzu splits a separable infinitive The verb is hingehen, 'to go there, walk on', with the separable prefix hin- marking motion away from the speaker. In a zu-infinitive the zu slips between prefix and stem, hin-zu-gehen, elided here to hinzugehn. It depends on Mühsal.
3
resembles the swan's still-unmade walk.
Grammargleichen takes the dative, not the accusative gleichen, 'to resemble', governs the dative: the thing resembled stands in the dative case, not the accusative. gleicht dem … Gang des Schwanes means 'resembles the swan's walk', with dem Gang dative and des Schwanes a genitive hung on it.
4
And dying, this no-longer-grasping
WordA coined noun from a whole phrase Rilke fuses nicht mehr, 'no longer', with the infinitive fassen, 'to grasp, take hold of', into one capitalized noun, das Nichtmehrfassen, 'the no-longer-grasping'. German lets any infinitive become a neuter noun this way.
5
of that ground on which we daily stand,
GrammarAn older genitive object jenes Grunds is genitive; fassen here takes a genitive object in the older, literary way of saying 'to take hold of something'. jener, 'that one yonder', is more distant and formal than dieser. The line reads 'this no-longer-grasping of that ground'.
6
its fearful settling-down—:
GrammarA reflexive verb nominalized whole sich niederlassen is a reflexive separable verb meaning 'to settle down, alight, lower oneself'. Rilke nominalizes it whole, reflexive pronoun included, into das Sich-Niederlassen, 'the settling-down'. It stands in the dative, still governed by gleicht.
7
into the waters, which gently receive him
Grammarin with the accusative for motion in takes the accusative when there is motion into something, the dative when there is rest within it. in die Wasser, 'into the waters', marks the swan's descent into the water, the goal of the settling-down named before it.
8
and which, as though blissful and bygone,
9
draw back beneath him, wave upon wave;
GrammarA separable, reflexive verb sich zurückziehen means 'to withdraw, draw back, retreat'. Its separable prefix zurück stands at the end of the relative clause: die sich … unter ihm zurückziehn means 'which draw back beneath him'. Flut um Flut means 'wave upon wave'.
10
while he, endlessly still and sure,
GrammarSends its verb to the clause end As a conjunction während means 'while, whereas' and sends its verb, geruht, to the end of the clause two lines later. It introduces the contrast between the waters retreating and the swan gliding on. As a preposition it means 'during', with the genitive.
11
ever more grown and more kingly
Wordmündig, of age and self-possessed mündig means 'of age, fully responsible for oneself'. immer mündiger, its comparative, means 'ever more come-of-age, ever more in possession of itself'. Paired with königlicher, 'more kingly', it lets the swan grow in mastery.
12
and more serenely deigns to glide on.
WordAn elevated verb meaning to deign geruhen zu … is an elevated, slightly archaic verb meaning 'to deign to, to graciously consent to' do something. geruht is its present third-person form, closing the während clause at the very end. gelassener, 'more serenely', modifies it.

The particulars

The text: Neue Gedichte, Rainer Maria Rilke. New Poems.
Reading aloud: Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
The app: The same text on your phone, your place kept, the audio offline. The first poems free, the rest $4.99.
App Store Google Play
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
Data: JSON · Markdown · A guide for agents