Through my life there trembles without plaint,
without a sigh a deep dark melancholy.
the pure and snowy blossoming of my dreams
is the consecration of my stillest days.
But oftentimes the great question crosses
my path. I become small and go
coldly past as though along some lake
whose flood I have not hardihood to measure.
And then a sorrow sinks upon me, dusky
as the gray of lusterless summer nights
through which a star glimmers - now and then - :
My hands then gropingly reach out for love,
because I want so much to pray sounds
that my hot mouth cannot find.
-Franz Kappus from Letters to a Young Poet
I like the colors in this poem...the lights and the darks and then the glimmering star. The white snowy features and then the reds of love and hot mouths. Although the colors do not represent themselves in words- my mind paints them. The colors also represent weight to the poem for me...the lighter colors, the lighter moods...the darker, the heavier. The rhythms are easy to read in this sonnet, unlike a lot of the others we have been reading.
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