can someone help me with a poem wrote by Rainer Maria Rilke?

Question

THE SWAN By Rainer Maria Rilke.

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.


And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down


into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown, more like a king, composed, father and father on.

QUESTIONS
1. What does the first stanza of "The Swan" compare the swan's walk to? What does the rest of the poem compare the swan's swimming to?

Answer 1

This is just my interpretation, but it seems to me that the first stanza is saying that life is not our most natural state of being -it is awkward and uncomfortable, and we sort of stumble through it by necessity, much as a swan on land. However, when we die (the remainder of the poem) we are in our element, as when the swan hits the water. Then we are free and fluid, released from the necessary burdens of life. I think this poet must have strong religious beliefs. At least, that's what I gather from it.....

Answer 2

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RE:
can someone help me with a poem wrote by Rainer Maria Rilke?
THE SWAN By Rainer Maria Rilke.

This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.


And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan when he nervously lets...

Answer 3

Jane\ The answer is resoundingly NO Gilgamesh is an Epic, fromBabylonia and is the earliest known literary works. A series of Sumerian legends and poems about the mythological hero-king Gilgamesh, thought to be a ruler of the 3rd millennium BC, were gathered into a longer Akkadian poem long afterward, with the most complete version extant today preserved on twelve clay tablets in the library collection of the 7th century BC Assyrian king Assurbanipal. One of the stories included in the epic relates to the deluge. The essential story revolves around the relationship between Gilgamesh, a king who has become distracted and disheartened by his rule, and a friend, Enkidu, who is half-wild and who undertakes dangerous quests with Gilgamesh. Much of the epic focuses on Gilgamesh's feelings of loss following Enkidu's death, and is often credited by historians as being one of the first literary works with high emphasis on immortality.