Lost in Translation (poem) the key clue here. The four lines come from that "lost" German translation by Rilke of Valéry's "Palme". (Merrill's own English translation of "Palme" is the source of the translated quatrain above. See Merrill's "Paul Valéry: "Palme"" in "Late Settings", 1985.) The original in French: from Paul Valéry, Charmes (1922) Palme classical dizain 7th Stanza The solution to the puzzle of the poem is hidden in plain sight all along. "Nothing's lost", Merrill suggests, when it comes to translating experience or memory, at least according to the way Merrill understands our human experience. The poem's coda salutes the power of
Sapphic stanza in Polish poetry Sapphic stanza in some poems. Olbrycht Karmanowski, a minor poet, employed it in the poem "O śmierci" ("On Death"). Lenart Gnoiński used Sapphic stanzas in the tenth poem of a sequence named "Łzy smutne" ("Sorrowful Tears"). Daniel Naborowski, a Calvinist poet, employed the Sapphic stanza in "Lament I" from "Laments on Death of Duke Radziwiłł, Castellan of Vilnius". The poem consists of eleven strophes. Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, whose poetry (influenced strongly by Giambattista Marino) is most typical for Baroque, used Sappho's stanza in "Do lutnie" ("To a Lute") from "Lutnia" ("The Lute") and in "Wiejski żywot" ("Life in a Village"