Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 79. LXXIX. THE DRUNKEN SONG. (continued)

--The hour approacheth: O man, thou higher man, take heed! this talk is for fine ears, for thine ears--WHAT SAITH DEEP MIDNIGHT'S VOICE INDEED?

5.

It carrieth me away, my soul danceth. Day's-work! Day's-work! Who is to be master of the world?

The moon is cool, the wind is still. Ah! Ah! Have ye already flown high enough? Ye have danced: a leg, nevertheless, is not a wing.

Ye good dancers, now is all delight over: wine hath become lees, every cup hath become brittle, the sepulchres mutter.

Ye have not flown high enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: "Free the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the moon make us drunken?"

Ye higher men, free the sepulchres, awaken the corpses! Ah, why doth the worm still burrow? There approacheth, there approacheth, the hour,--

--There boometh the clock-bell, there thrilleth still the heart, there burroweth still the wood-worm, the heart-worm. Ah! Ah! THE WORLD IS DEEP!

6.

Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!-- how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the ponds of love!

Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become ripe,--

--Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart --now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth brown,

--Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,

--A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour of old happiness,