Hailed as the greatest modern lyrical poet of Germany, Rainer Maria Rilke’s genius lies in his passion for perfection, artistic integrity and ‘willingness to remain a perpetual beginner’. The verse contained in this selection ranges from the objective, naturalistic descriptions of his earliest works to the increasingly effusive outpourings of half-religious ecstasy and anguish that characterize his later poems and culminates in the overwhelmingly personal vision of the famous ‘Duino Elegies’ and ‘The Sonnets to Orpheus’, in which his most intense experiences of living and being find their noblest expression.