Through the grey cell of the young Monk there flash in luminous magnificence the colours of the great renaissance masters, for he feels in Titian, in Michelangelo, in Raphael the same fervour that animates him; they, too, are worshippers of the same God. There are poems in _The Book of Pilgrimage_ of the stillness of a whispered prayer in a great Cathedral and there are others that carry in their exultation the music of mighty hymns. The visions in this second book are no less ecstatic though less glowingly colourful; they have withdrawn inward and have brought a great peace and a great faith as in the poem of God, whose very manifestation is the quietude and hush of a silent world: "By day Thou art the Legend and the Dream That like a whisper floats about all men, The deep and brooding stillnesses which seem, After the hour has struck, to close again. And when the day with drowsy gesture bends And sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies, As from each roof a tower of smoke ascends So does Thy Realm, my God, around me rise." The last part of _The Book of Hours_, _The Book of Poverty and Death_, is finally a symphony of variations on the two great symbolic themes in the work of Rilke. As Christ in the parable of the rich young man demands the abandonment of all treasures, so in this book the poet sees the coming of the Kingdom, the fulfilment of all our longings for a nearness to God when we have become simple again like little children and poor in possessions like God Himself. In this phase of Rilke's development, the principle of renunciation constitutes a certain negative element in his philosophy. The poet later proceeded to a positive acquiescence toward man's possessions, at least those acquired or created in the domain of art. In our approach through the mystic we touch reality most deeply. It is because of this that all art and all philosophy culminate in their final forms in a crystallization of those values of life that remain forever inexplicable to pure reason; they become religious in the simple, profound sense of that word. Before the eternal facts of Life doubt and strife are reconciled into faith, will and pride change into humility. The realization of this truth expressed in the medium of poetry is the significance of Rilke's _Book of Hours_. A distinguished Scandinavian writer has pronounced _Das Stunden-Buch_ one of the supreme literary achievements of our time and its deepest and most beautiful book of prayer. In his subsequent poetic work Rilke did not again reach the sustained high quality of this book, the mood and idea of which he incorporated into a prose work of exquisite lyrical beauty: _The Sketch of Malte Laurids Brigge_. * * * * *