The Song of Melancholy (LXXIV)

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When Zarathustra spake these sayings, he stood nigh to the entrance of his cave; with the last words, however, he slipped away from his guests, and fled for a little while into the open air

"O pure odours around me," cried he, "O blessed stillness around me! But where are mine animals? Hither, hither, mine eagle and my serpent!

Tell me, mine animals: these higher men, all of them—do they perhaps not SMELL well? O pure odours around me! Now only do I know and feel how I love you, mine animals."

—And Zarathustra said once more: "I love you, mine animals!" The eagle, however, and the serpent pressed close to him when he spake these words, and looked up to him. In this attitude were they all three silent together, and sniffed and sipped the good air with one another. For the air here outside was better than with the higher men

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Hardly, however, had Zarathustra left the cave when the old magician got up, looked cunningly about him, and said: "He is gone!

And already, ye higher men—let me tickle you with this complimentary and flattering name, as he himself doeth—already doth mine evil spirit of deceit and magic attack me, my melancholy devil

—Which is an adversary to this Zarathustra from the very heart: forgive it for this! Now doth it wish to conjure before you, it hath just ITS hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit

Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names, whether ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the conscientious,' or 'the penitents of the spirit,' or 'the unfettered,' or 'the great longers,'—

—Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes—unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable

I know you, ye higher men, I know him,—I know also this fiend whom I love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me like the beautiful mask of a saint

—Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy devil, delighteth:—I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for the sake of mine evil spirit.—

But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it hath a longing—

—Open your eyes!—it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open your wits!

The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil—man or woman—this spirit of evening-melancholy is!"

Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized his harp

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In evening's limpid air
What time the dew's soothings
Unto the earth downpour
Invisibly and unheard—
For tender shoe-gear wear
The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle—:
Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart
How once thou thirstedest
For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings
All singed and weary thirstedest
What time on yellow grass-pathways
Wicked, occidental sunny glances
Through sombre trees about thee sported
Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?

"Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?"—so taunted they—
"Nay! Merely poet!
A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling
That aye must lie
That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
For booty lusting
Motley masked
Self-hidden, shrouded
Himself his booty—
HE—of truth the wooer?
Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet!
Just motley speaking
From mask of fool confusedly shouting
Circumambling on fabricated word-bridges
On motley rainbow-arches
'Twixt the spurious heavenly
And spurious earthly
Round us roving, round us soaring,—
MERE FOOL! MERE POET!

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!