Ah yes! I long for you. To you I glide
And lose myself — for to you I belong.
The hope that hitherto I have denied
Imperious comes to me as from your side
Serious, unfaltering and swift and strong.

Those times: the times when I was quite alone
By memories wrapt that whispered to me low,
My silence was the quiet of a stone
Over which rippling murmuring waters flow.

But in these weeks of the awakening Spring
Something within me has been freed — something
That in the past dark years unconscious lay,
Which rises now within me and commands
And gives my poor warm life into your hands
Who know not what I was that Yesterday.

“The Woman Who Loves” by Ranier Maria Rilke, from The Book of Pictures.