48. Before Sunrise
O HEAVEN above me, you pure, you deep heaven! you abyss of light! Gazing on you, I tremble with divine desires.
Up to your height to toss myself- that is my depth! In your purity to hide myself- that is my innocence!
The God veils his beauty: thus hide you your stars. You speak not: thus proclaim you your wisdom to me.
Mute o'er the raging sea have you risen for me to-day; your love and your modesty make a revelation to my raging soul.
In that you came to me beautiful, veiled in your beauty, in that you spoke to me mutely, obvious in your wisdom:
Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of your soul! Before the sun did you come to me- the most lonesome one.
We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness, and ground common; even the sun is common to us.
We do not speak to each other, because we know too much-: we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.
Are you not the light of my fire? have you not the sister-soul of my insight?
Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:-
-Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt stream like rain.
And wandered I alone, for what did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, whom did I ever seek, if not you, upon mountains?
