Page:Thus Spake Zarathustra - Thomas Common - 1917.djvu/363

 "Of truth the wooer? You?"- so taunted they-

"No! Merely poet!

A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,

That ayou must lie,

That wittingly, wilfully, ayou must lie:

For booty lusting,

Motley masked,

Self-hidden, shrouded,

Himself his booty-

He- of truth the wooer?

No! 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:

No! hostile to all such truthfulness-statues,

In every desert homelier than at temples,

With cattish wantonness,

Through every window leaping

Quickly into chances,