 Rilke uses the images of love and of lovers as a way of showing mankind 's potential and humanity 's failures in achieving the transcendent understanding embodied by the angels . In the Second Elegy , Rilke writes that " Lovers , if they knew how , might utter / wondrous things in the midnight air . " ( Liebende könnten , verstünden sie 's , in der Nachtluft / wunderlich reden . ) He depicts " the inadequacy of ordinary lovers " and contrasts a feminine form of " sublime love " and a masculine " blind animal passion . " At the time the first elegies were written , Rilke often " expressed a longing for human companionship and affection , and then , often immediately afterwards , asking whether he could really respond to such companionship if it were offered to him ... " He notices a " decline in the lives of lovers ... when they began to receive , they also began to lose the power of giving . " Later , during World War I , he would lament that " the world has fallen into the hands of men . " In the face of death , life and love is not cheap and meaningless and Rilke asserted that great lovers are able to recognize all three ( life , love , and death ) as part of a unity . Rilke asserted that the true meaning of love could be understood through death providing love a meaning in this unity — that " the nature of every ultimate love ... is only able to reach the loved one in the infinite . " 
