Friedrich Nietzsche
nor from its wide suggestiveness, however incapable it may be of scientific demonstration.
From unfathomed depths of feeling wells up the paean of the prophet of the life intense.
O Mensch! Gib Acht!
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit![1]
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
Ich schlief, ich schlief —,
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht:—
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist ihr Weh — ,
Lust — tiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit —
A timid heart may indeed recoil from the iron necessity of reliving ad infinitum its woeful terrestrial fate. But the prospect can hold no terror for the heroic soul by whose fiat all items of experience have assumed important meanings and
O man ! Lose not sight !
What saith the deep midnight?
"I lay in sleep, in sleep;
From deep dream I woke to light.
The world is deep,
And deeper than ever day thought it might.
Deep is its woe, —
And deeper still than woe — delight."
Saith woe: "Pass, go!
Eternity's sought by all delight, —
Eternity deep — by all delight.
- ↑ "Thus Spake Zarathustra," The Drunken Song, p. 174. — The translation but faintly suggests the poetic appeal of the original.
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