Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 71. LXXI. THE GREETING. (continued)

And lo! now is it all over with our cries of distress. Now are our minds and hearts open and enraptured. Little is lacking for our spirits to become wanton.

There is nothing, O Zarathustra, that groweth more pleasingly on earth than a lofty, strong will: it is the finest growth. An entire landscape refresheth itself at one such tree.

To the pine do I compare him, O Zarathustra, which groweth up like thee-- tall, silent, hardy, solitary, of the best, supplest wood, stately,--

--In the end, however, grasping out for ITS dominion with strong, green branches, asking weighty questions of the wind, the storm, and whatever is at home on high places;

--Answering more weightily, a commander, a victor! Oh! who should not ascend high mountains to behold such growths?

At thy tree, O Zarathustra, the gloomy and ill-constituted also refresh themselves; at thy look even the wavering become steady and heal their hearts.

And verily, towards thy mountain and thy tree do many eyes turn to-day; a great longing hath arisen, and many have learned to ask: 'Who is Zarathustra?'

And those into whose ears thou hast at any time dripped thy song and thy honey: all the hidden ones, the lone-dwellers and the twain-dwellers, have simultaneously said to their hearts:

'Doth Zarathustra still live? It is no longer worth while to live, everything is indifferent, everything is useless: or else--we must live with Zarathustra!'

'Why doth he not come who hath so long announced himself?' thus do many people ask; 'hath solitude swallowed him up? Or should we perhaps go to him?'

Now doth it come to pass that solitude itself becometh fragile and breaketh open, like a grave that breaketh open and can no longer hold its dead. Everywhere one seeth resurrected ones.