THE HONEY-OFFERING 343
with a thousand hands am I. How could I dare to call that offering !
And when I asked for honey, I merely wanted to have a bait and sweet slime and phlegm, for which even growling bears and strange, morose, evil birds smack their lips
To have the best bait that is requisite for hunts- men and fishers. For if the world is like a dark forest of animals, and a pleasure-ground of all wild huntsmen, it seemeth unto me to be still more, and preferably, a bottomless, rich sea
A sea full of many-coloured fish and crabs, by which even Gods might be tempted to become fishers there and throw out their nets. So rich is the world in strange things, great and small !
In particular the world of men, the sea of men ! For that I now throw out my golden fishing rod, say- ing : ' Open, O thou abyss of men !
Open and throw into my hands thy fish and glitter- ing crabs ! With my best bait this day I bait the strangest human fish !
My happiness itself I throw out into all distances and remote places, between east, south, and west, to try whether on the hook of my happiness many human fish will learn to pull and wriggle.
Until they, biting on my pointed hidden hooks, are forced to come up unto my height, the most many- coloured abyss-groundlings, unto the most malicious one of all catchers of human fish.'
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