The Rose-Window

In there: their paws with soundless, lazy steps

create in stillness a confusing stir;

and then how suddenly on one of the cats

your glance moves to and fro,-and then aware,

compellingly in her great eyes she takes

the glance, which, as by a maelstrom caught fast,

swims for a little while, and then-sinks,

and of itself has no more consciousness:

when these eyes, which are seemingly at rest,

open, and, as with a roar, together close,

drawing the gaze into the very blood-:

so out of darkness once in times long past

the great Cathedral's glowing window-rose

thus seized a heart and drew it unto God.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Translated by Jessie Lemont