The duino elegies

Hear then, my heart, as only saints have heard: so that the mighty call raised them from the earth: they, though, knelt on impossibly and paid no attention: such was their listening. Have you remembered Gastara Stampa sufficiently yet, that any girl, whose lover has gone, might feel from that intenser example of love: ‘Could I only become like her?’ Should not these ancient sufferings be finally fruitful for us? Isn’t it time that, loving, we freed ourselves from the beloved, and, trembling, endured as the arrow endures the bow, so as to be, in its flight, something more than itself? For staying is nowhere. But lovers are taken back by exhausted Nature into herself, as if there were not the power to make them again. Begin, always as new, the unattainable praising: think: the hero prolongs himself, even his falling was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth. Found as loving as those who were satisfied.