Lament

Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
    A light is shining but the distant star
    From which it still comes to me has been dead
    A thousand years ... In the dim phantom boat
    That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
    A clock just struck within some house remote.
    Which house?--I long to still my beating heart.
    Beneath the sky's vast dome I long to pray ...
    Of all the stars there must be far away
    A single star which still exists apart.
    And I believe that I should know the one
    Which has alone endured and which alone
    Like a white City that all space commands
    At the ray's end in the high heaven stands.

        Rainer Maria Rilke
        (tr. Jessie Lamont)