Chapter I

Not much longer thirstest thou,
O burnt-up heart!
Promise is in the air,
From unknown mouths I feel a breath,
--The great coolness comes....
My sun stood hot above me at noonday:
A greeting to you that are coming,
Ye sudden winds,
Ye cool spirits of afternoon!

The air is strange and pure.
See how the night
Leers at me with eyes askance,
Like a seducer!...
Be strong, my brave heart,
And ask not "Why?"

2

The day of my life!
The sun sinks,
And the calm flood
Already is gilded.
Warm breathes the rock:
Did happiness at noonday
Take its siesta well upon it?
In green light
Happiness still glimmers up from the brown abyss

Day of my life!
Eventide's nigh,
Thy eye already
Glows half-broken,
Thy dew already
Pours out its tear-drops,
Already over the white seas
Walks the purple of thy love,
Thy last hesitating holiness....

3

Golden gaiety, come!
Thou, the sweetest foretaste--
Foretaste of death!
--Went I my way too swiftly?
Now that the foot grows weary,
Thine eye still catches me,
Thy happiness still catches me.

Around but waves and play.
Whatever was hard
--Sank into blue oblivion.
My boat now stands idle.
Storm and motion--how did it forget them!
Desire and Hope are drowned,
Sea and soul are becalmed.

Seventh Solitude!
Never felt!
Sweet certainty nearer,
Or warmer the sun's ray.
--Glows not the ice of my summit yet?
Silvery, light, a fish
Now my vessel swims out....

THE LAST DESIRE[1]

So would I die
As then I saw him die,
The friend, who like a god
Into my darkling youth
Threw lightning's light and fire:
Buoyant yet deep was he,
Yea, in the battle's strife
With the gay dancer's heart.

Amid the warriors
His was the lightest heart,
Amid the conquerors
His brow was dark with thought--
He was a fate poised on his destiny:
Unbending, casting thought into the past
And future, such was he.

Fearful beneath the weight of victory,
Yet chanting, as both victory and death
Came hand and hand to him.

Commanding even as he lay in death,
And his command that man annihilate.

So would I die
As then I saw him die,
Victorious and destroying.

THE BEACON

Here, where the island grew amid the seas,
A sacrificial rock high-towering,
Here under darkling heavens,
Zarathustra lights his mountain-fires,
A beacon for ships that have strayed,
A beacon for them that have an answer!...

These flames with grey-white belly,
In cold distances sparkle their desire,
Stretches its neck towards ever purer heights--
A snake upreared in impatience:
This signal I set up there before me.
This flame is mine own soul,
Insatiable for new distances,
Speeding upward, upward its silent heat.

Why flew Zarathustra from beasts and men?
Why fled he swift from all continents?
Six solitudes he knows already--
But even the sea was not lonely enough for him,
On the island he could climb, on the mount he
became flame,
At the seventh solitude
He casts a fishing-rod far o'er his head.

Storm-tossed seamen! Wreckage of ancient stars
Ye seas of the future! Uncompassed heavens!
At all lonely ones I now throw my fishing-rod.
Give answer to the flame's impatience,
Let me, the fisher on high mountains,
Catch my seventh, last solitude!----

FAME AND ETERNITY[2]