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Translated by L. A. Magnus
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MIDDAY of Life! Oh, season of delight!
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Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark—
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I peer for friends, am ready day and night,—
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Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
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Is not the glacier's grey today for you
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The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread
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And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue,
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To spy for you from farthest eagle's view.
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My table was spread out for you on high—
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Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?—
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My realm—what realm hath wider boundary?
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My honey—who hath sipped its fragrancy?
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Friends, ye are there! Woe me,—yet I am not
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Ye stare and stop—better your wrath could speak!
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I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what
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I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
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Am I an other? Strange am I to Me?
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A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung?
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Hindering too oft my own self's potency,
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Wounded and hampered by self-victory?
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I sought where-so the wind blows keenest. There
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Where no man dwells, on lonesome ice-lorn fell,
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And unlearned Man and God and curse and prayer?
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Became a ghost haunting the glaciers bare?
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Ye, my old friends! Look! Ye turn pale, filled o'er
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Go! Yet not in wrath. Ye could ne'er live here.
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Here in the farthest realm of ice and scaur,
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A huntsman must one be, like chamois soar.
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An evil huntsman was I? See how taut
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Strongest was he by whom such bolt were sent—
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Woe now! That arrow is with peril fraught,
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Perilous as none.—Have yon safe home ye sought!
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Ye go! Thou didst endure enough, oh, heart;—
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Unto new friends thy portals widely ope,
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Let old ones be. Bid memory depart!
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Wast thou young then, now—better young thou art!
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What linked us once together, one hope's tie—
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Those lines, now fading, Love once wrote thereon?)—
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Is like a parchment, which the hand is shy
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To touch—like crackling leaves, all seared, all dry.
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Oh! Friends no more! They are—what name for those?—
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Friends' phantom-flight
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Knocking at my heart's window-pane at night,
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Gazing on me, that speaks "We were" and goes,—
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Oh, withered words, once fragrant as the rose!
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Pinings of youth that might not understand!
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Which I deemed changed with me, kin of my kind:
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But they grew old, and thus were doomed and banned:
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None but new kith are native of my land!
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Midday of life! My second youth's delight!
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Unrestful joy to long, to lurk, to hark!
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I peer for friends!—am ready day and night,
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For my new friends. Come! Come! The time is right!
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This song is done,—the sweet sad cry of rue
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A wizard wrought it, he the timely friend,
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The midday-friend,—no, do not ask me who;
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At midday 'twas, when one became as two.
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We keep our Feast of Feasts, sure of our bourne,
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The Guest of Guests, friend Zarathustra, came!
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The world now laughs, the grisly veil was torn,
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And Light and Dark were one that wedding-morn.
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