Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra

FOURTH AND LAST PART. 74. LXXIV. THE SONG OF MELANCHOLY. (continued)

HE--of truth the wooer?
Not still, stiff, smooth and cold,
Become an image,
A godlike statue,
Set up in front of temples,
As a God's own door-guard:
Nay! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,
In every desert homelier than at temples,
With cattish wantonness,
Through every window leaping
Quickly into chances,
Every wild forest a-sniffing,
Greedily-longingly, sniffing,
That thou, in wild forests,
'Mong the motley-speckled fierce creatures,
Shouldest rove, sinful-sound and fine-coloured,
With longing lips smacking,
Blessedly mocking, blessedly hellish, blessedly bloodthirsty,
Robbing, skulking, lying--roving:--

Or unto eagles like which fixedly,
Long adown the precipice look,
Adown THEIR precipice:--
Oh, how they whirl down now,
Thereunder, therein,
To ever deeper profoundness whirling!--
Then,
Sudden,
With aim aright,
With quivering flight,
On LAMBKINS pouncing,
Headlong down, sore-hungry,
For lambkins longing,
Fierce 'gainst all lamb-spirits,
Furious-fierce all that look
Sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,
--Grey, with lambsheep kindliness!

Even thus,
Eaglelike, pantherlike,
Are the poet's desires,
Are THINE OWN desires 'neath a thousand guises,
Thou fool! Thou poet!
Thou who all mankind viewedst--
So God, as sheep--:
The God TO REND within mankind,
As the sheep in mankind,
And in rending LAUGHING--

THAT, THAT is thine own blessedness!
Of a panther and eagle--blessedness!
Of a poet and fool--the blessedness!--

In evening's limpid air,
What time the moon's sickle,
Green, 'twixt the purple-glowings,
And jealous, steal'th forth:
--Of day the foe,
With every step in secret,
The rosy garland-hammocks
Downsickling, till they've sunken
Down nightwards, faded, downsunken:--

Thus had I sunken one day
From mine own truth-insanity,
From mine own fervid day-longings,
Of day aweary, sick of sunshine,
--Sunk downwards, evenwards, shadowwards:
By one sole trueness
All scorched and thirsty:
--Bethinkst thou still, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How then thou thirstedest?-
THAT I SHOULD BANNED BE
FROM ALL THE TRUENESS!
MERE FOOL! MERE POET!