Waters unendingly full of life move along the old aqueducts into the great city and dance in the many squares over white stone basins by day and lift up their murmuring to the night that is large and starry here and soft with winds. And gardens are here, unforgettable avenues and flights of stairs, stairs devised by Michelangelo, stairs that are built after the pattern of downward-gliding waters— broadly bringing forth step out of step in their descent like wave out of wave. Through such impressions one collects oneself, wins oneself back again out of the pretentious multiplicity that talks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one learns slowly to recognize the very few things in which the eternal endures that one can love and something solitary in which one can quietly take part.
Just reread this passage from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet— headed to Rome tomorrow; can’t wait.
