RILKE'S STUNDEN-BUCH IS A YOUTHFUL WORK but a masterpiece. In offering this translation my hope is to share with a wide public the imagery, thoughts and emotions, and something of the poetry filling the mind of a young man destined for greatness; in over a century this work has received far less than the attention it is due.

Many thanks are owed for the help and foresight of others. When I came across Das Stunden-Buch in my youth and began to translate from it, I had been fortunate to be coached by an inspired teacher, the late Denise Mary Joad. She was a Cambridge scholar, formidable not only in manner and intellect but in imagination. It had been her suggestion that I take up German, only just in time for Oxford entrance; she introduced me to Rilke and even gave me three of the beautiful little Insel volumes.

Now, with the translation complete, I wish Denise Joad were still with us so that I could take the book to her; she became a dear (and wickedly witty) friend, often exhorting me to continue the translation. Before her influence there was that of my late father John F. C. Mills, who had grounded me in his favourite turn-of-the-century English poems, holding family poetry recitals of a Sunday, Victorian fashion; I am indebted to his vision and dedication. Then in 2004 Sheila Glassar, a former colleague at the Institute of Germanic Languages and Literatures, as it then was, in London, challenged me almost out of the blue to translate some Rilke.