Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 70. LXX. NOONTIDE. (continued)

--As a ship that putteth into the calmest cove:--it now draweth up to the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more faithful?

As such a ship huggeth the shore, tuggeth the shore:--then it sufficeth for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger ropes are required there.

As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads.

O happiness! O happiness! Wilt thou perhaps sing, O my soul? Thou liest in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd playeth his pipe.

Take care! Hot noontide sleepeth on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.

Do not sing, thou prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo--hush! The old noontide sleepeth, it moveth its mouth: doth it not just now drink a drop of happiness--

--An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisketh over it, its happiness laugheth. Thus--laugheth a God. Hush!--

--'For happiness, how little sufficeth for happiness!' Thus spake I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: THAT have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.

The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance--LITTLE maketh up the BEST happiness. Hush!

--What hath befallen me: Hark! Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen--hark! into the well of eternity?

--What happeneth to me? Hush! It stingeth me--alas--to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!

--What? Hath not the world just now become perfect? Round and ripe? Oh, for the golden round ring--whither doth it fly? Let me run after it! Quick!