Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FROM LOFTY MOUNTAINS, by FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FROM LOFTY MOUNTAINS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O noon of life! Delightful garden land!
Last Line: The marriage of the darkness and the light. ...


O NOON of life! Delightful garden land!
Fair summer station!
O, restless bliss in watchful expectation:—
For friends I wait—both day and night attend.
Where are ye, friends? Oh, come! The time's at hand!

Doth not for you today the glacier hoar,
Bedeck with roses?
The brooklet seeks you; longing for you poses
The breeze-tossed cloud still loftier than of yore—
To spy you out—where highest eagles soar.

Aloft from you my board is bounteous spread:—
Whose habitation
So nigh both gulf and starry constellation?
What sovereign e'er o'er wider realms did tread?
My fragrant honey—whom hath it e'er fed?

Ye come, my friends! but ah, how I belie
Your expectation?
Ye stop, amazed!—better were indignation!
I'm—he no more? Changed gait and face and eye,
No more to you the signs of friend imply?

Another now, with my first self compared,
Aye self-outgrowing?
A wrestler, also, oft self-overthrowing?
Too oft 'gainst his own force with war declared,
By his own victory wounded and impaired?

I sought the place where blew the sharpest air;
There chose my dwelling,
Where no one dwelt—those ice-bear zones repelling;
Unlearned man and God and curse and prayer,
Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?

—Ye friends of old, whose pallid faces peep,
With love and terror!
Forgive me! Go!—To lodge here—were an error.
Amidst such realms of ice, and rocks so steep,
One must a hunter be,—like chamois leap.

I'm now a hunter vicious!—See how tight
My bow is straining;
The strongest only such a force attaining!
But ah! Dangerous is now that arrow's might
More than all arrows! Hence, be safe in flight! ...

Ye go? O heart, enough thou hadst to bear—
Thy hope remaining:
Thy doors keep open now, new friends attaining!
Let go the old, nor for past memories care!
Once young—thou yet hast better youth to spare!

What ever bound us, common hope's bless'd bond—
Who reads signs pallid,
Which love once wrote thereon in symbols hallowed?
To parchment I compare it, which the hand
Unwilling grasps,—it soils and makes a brand.

Thus friends no more; they are—what name have they?
Friends' apparition!
They haunt my door and heart for recognition;
They look at me, "Friends we were once?" They say:
O withered word, like fragrant rose decay!

O youthful longing, liable to stray!
Friends I desired,
Whom changed I deemed, and like to me inspired,—
Advancing age hath banished them away:—
Who change can only 'mong my kindred stay.

O noon of life! A second youthful land!
Fair summer station!
O, restless bliss in watchful expectation:—
For friends I wait—both day and night attend,—
For the new friends! Oh, come! The time's at hand!

This song is o'er,—the longings' sweet refrain
Ceased with good reason:
By charmer's spell, the friend at the right season,
The noonday friend—but why should I explain—
It was at noon when one was changed to twain. ...

We celebrate, now sure of conquering might,
The grandest lustra:—
The guest of guests arrived, friend Zarathustra!
The world now smiles, rent is the veil of night—
The marriage of the darkness and the light. ...





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