Beyond Good and Evil/Aftersong

1.
 * MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
 * My summer's park!
 * Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark–
 * I peer for friends, am ready day and night,–
 * Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!

2.
 * Is not the glacier's grey today for you
 * Rose-garlanded?
 * The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
 * And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
 * To spy for you from farthest eagle's view

3.
 * My table was spread out for you on high–
 * Who dwelleth so
 * Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?–
 * My realm–what realm hath wider boundary?
 * My honey–who hath sipped its fragrancy?

4.
 * Friends, ye are there! Woe me,–yet I am not
 * He whom ye seek?
 * Ye stare and stop–better your wrath could speak!
 * I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what
 * I am, to you my friends, now am I not?

5.
 * Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
 * Yet from Me sprung?
 * A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
 * Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
 * Wounded and hampered by self-victory?

6.
 * I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There
 * I learned to dwell
 * Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
 * And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
 * Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?

7.
 * Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
 * With love and fear!
 * Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
 * Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
 * A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.

8.
 * An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
 * My bow was bent!
 * Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent–
 * Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
 * Perilous as none.–Have yon safe home ye sought!

9.
 * Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;–
 * Strong was thy hope;
 * Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
 * Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
 * Wast thou young then, now–better young thou art!

10.
 * What linked us once together, one hope's tie–
 * (Who now doth con
 * Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)–
 * Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
 * To touch–like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.

11.
 * Oh! Friends no more! They are–what name for those?–
 * Friends' phantom-flight
 * Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
 * Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,–
 * Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!

12.
 * Pinings of youth that might not understand!
 * For which I pined,
 * Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
 * But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
 * None but new kith are native of my land!

13.
 * Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
 * My summer's park!
 * Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!
 * I peer for friends!–am ready day and night,
 * For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!

14.
 * This song is done,–the sweet sad cry of rue
 * Sang out its end;
 * A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
 * The midday-friend,–no, do not ask me who;
 * At midday 'twas, when one became as two.

15.
 * We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
 * Our aims self-same:
 * The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
 * The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
 * And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.