Translation of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)
The Wild Rose-Bush
How it stands there in the gloaming
of a rainy evening; young and pure;
offering its shoots with outstretched arms
and yet in deep rose-essence, very sure;
the nascent blossoms, open here and there,
each born by chance, of outside nurture shorn:
now in endless self-surpassing and
beyond all power of words are born,
it hails the wanderer, who at dusk
in deep reflection wends his way,
Oh, look at me, see here, so sure and unprotected
yet I have everything to make my day.