Thus Spake Zarathustra · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
LXX. NOONTIDE.
As a delicate wind danceth invisibly upon parqueted seas, light, feather-light, so—danceth sleep upon me. No eye doth it close to me, it leaveth my soul awake. Light is it, verily, feather-light. It persuadeth me, I know not how, it toucheth me inwardly with a caressing hand, it constraineth me. Yea, it constraineth me, so that my soul stretcheth itself out:— —How long and weary it becometh, my strange soul! Hath a seventh-day evening come to it precisely at noontide? Hath it already wandered too long, blissfully, among good and ripe things? It stretcheth itself out, long—longer! it lieth still, my strange soul. Too many good things hath it already tasted; this golden sadness oppresseth it, it distorteth its mouth. —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.
Now have ye slept your fill; for how long a time? A half-eternity! Well then, up now, mine old heart! For how long after such a sleep mayest thou—remain awake?” (But then did he fall asleep anew, and his soul spake against him and defended itself, and lay down again)—“Leave me alone! Hush! Hath not the world just now become perfect? Oh, for the golden round ball!— “Get up,” said Zarathustra, “thou little thief, thou sluggard! What! Still stretching thyself, yawning, sighing, falling into deep wells? Who art thou then, O my soul!” (and here he became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.) “O heaven above me,” said he sighing, and sat upright, “thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul? When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things,—when wilt thou drink this strange soul— —When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?” Thus spake Zarathustra, and rose from his couch beside the tree, as if awakening from a strange drunkenness: and behold! there stood the sun still exactly above his head. One might, however, rightly infer therefrom that Zarathustra had not then slept long.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.