1By F W Nietzsche

2Translated by L. A. Magnus

31.

4MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!

5My summer's park!

6Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark—

7I peer for friends, am ready day and night,—

8Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!

92.

10Is not the glacier's grey today for you

11Rose-garlanded?

12The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread

13And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,

14To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.

153.

16My table was spread out for you on high—

17Who dwelleth so

18Star-near, so near the grisly pit below? —

19My realm—what realm hath wider boundary?

20My honey—who hath sipped its fragrancy?

214.

22Friends, ye are there! Woe me,—yet I am not

23He whom ye seek?

24Ye stare and stop—better your wrath could speak!

25I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what

26I am, to you my friends, now am I not?

275.

28Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?

29Yet from Me sprung?

30A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?

31Hindering too oft my own self's potency,

32Wounded and hampered by self-victory?

336.

34I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There

35I learned to dwell

36Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,

37And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?

38Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?

397.

40Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er

41With love and fear!

42Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.

43Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,

44A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.

458.

46An evil huntsman was I? See how taut

47My bow was bent!

48Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent—

49Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,

50Perilous as none. —Have yon safe home ye sought!

519.

52Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;—

53Strong was thy hope;

54Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,

55Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!

56Wast thou young then, now—better young thou art!

5710.

58What linked us once together, one hope's tie—

59(Who now doth con

60Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon? )—

61Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy

62To touch—like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.

6311.

64Oh! Friends no more! They are—what name for those? —

65Friends' phantom-flight

66Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,

67Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,—

68Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!

6912.

70Pinings of youth that might not understand!

71For which I pined,

72Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:

73But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:

74None but new kith are native of my land!

7513.

76Midday of life! My second youth's delight!

77My summer's park!

78Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!

79I peer for friends! —am ready day and night,

80For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!

8114.

82This song is done,—the sweet sad cry of rue

83Sang out its end;

84A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,

85The midday-friend,—no, do not ask me who;

86At midday 'twas, when one became as two.

8715.

88We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,

89Our aims self-same:

90The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!

91The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,

92And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.