draws up to the land, weary of long voyages and uncertain seas. Is not the land more faithful?
As such a ship hugs the shore, tugs the shore:- then it suffices for a spider to spin its thread from the ship to the land. No stronger ropes are required there.
As such a weary ship in the calmest cove, so do I also now repose, nigh to the earth, faithful, trusting, waiting, bound to it with the lightest threads.
O happiness! O happiness! Will you perhaps sing, O my soul? you lie in the grass. But this is the secret, solemn hour, when no shepherd plays his pipe.
Take care! Hot noontide sleeps on the fields. Do not sing! Hush! The world is perfect.
Do not sing, you prairie-bird, my soul! Do not even whisper! Lo- hush! The old noontide sleeps, it moves its mouth: does it not just now drink a drop of happiness-
-An old brown drop of golden happiness, golden wine? Something whisks over it, its happiness laughs. Thus- laughs a God. Hush!-
-'For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!' Thus spoke I once and thought myself wise. But it was a blasphemy: that have I now learned. Wise fools speak better.
The least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye-glance- little makes up the best happiness. Hush!
-What has befallen me: Hark! has time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen- hark! into the well of eternity?
-What happens to me? Hush! It stings me- alas- to the heart? To the heart! Oh, break up, break up, my heart, after such happiness, after such a sting!
