“I live my life in widening circleThat reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one,But I give myself to it. I circle around God, that primordial tower.I have been circling for thousands of years,And I still don't know: am I a falcon,A storm, or a great song? [I, 2]”

Austrian poet

Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austrian poet and major German-language writer. He is remembered for writing with a distinctive, highly expressive voice, and for work that critics have often read as marked by mysticism. His writing explores subjective experience and doubt, and it spans poetry, one novel, several volumes of correspondence, and a few early novellas. These pieces helped establish his reputation as a writer whose language is intimate, reflective, and inward-looking.