XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE.

Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his friendly hand-shaking. Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.

I honour him, that bad guest, but gladly leave him alone. Gladly do I run away from him; and when one runneth WELL, then one escapeth him!

With warm feet and warm thoughts do I run where the wind is calm—to the sunny corner of mine olive-mount. Thou speakest not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.

There do I laugh at my stern guest, and am still fond of him; because he cleareth my house of flies, and quieteth many little noises.

For he suffereth it not if a gnat wanteth to buzz, or even two of them; also the lanes maketh he lonesome, so that the moonlight is afraid there at night.

A hard guest is he,—but I honour him, and do not worship, like the tenderlings, the pot-bellied fire-idol. BEFORE the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one.

Better even a little teeth-chattering than idol-adoration!—so willeth my nature.

Him whom I love, I love better in winter than in summer; better do I now mock at mine enemies, and more heartily, when winter sitteth in my house.

Heartily, verily, even when I CREEP into bed—: there, still laugheth and wantoneth my hidden happiness; even my deceptive dream laugheth. Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine insight?

I, a—creeper?

A poor bed warmeth me more than a rich one, for I am jealous of my poverty.

With a wickedness do I begin every day: I mock at the winter with a cold bath: on that account grumbleth my stern house-mate. And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?

Also do I like to tickle him with a wax-taper, that he may finally let the heavens emerge from ashy-grey twilight.

For especially wicked am I in the morning: at the early hour when the pail rattleth at the well, and horses neigh warmly in grey lanes:— And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

Impatiently do I then wait, that the clear sky may finally dawn for me, the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the whitehead,—

—The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its sun!

Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence?

Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,—all good roguish things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so—for once only!

A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:— Thou abyss of light!—because they rob thee of MY Yea and Amen.

—Like it to stifle one’s sun, and one’s inflexible solar will: verily, this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL!

My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not to betray itself by silence.

Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude. Thou abyss of light!—into all abysses do I then carry my beneficent Yea-saying.

That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate will—for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.

Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.

But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers: precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!

But the clear, the honest, the transparent—these are for me the wisest silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest water doth not—betray it.—

Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me!

And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold—lest my soul should be ripped up?

MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?

Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls—how COULD their envy endure my happiness!

Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks—and NOT that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!

They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds. This is now thy purity unto me, that there is no eternal reason-spider and reason-cobweb:—

They commiserate also my accidents and chances:—but MY word saith: “Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!”

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes! Have I spoken unspeakable things? Have I abused, when I meant to bless thee?

—If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers!

—If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity! Not everything may be uttered in presence of day. But day cometh: so let us part!

This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains either. O thou, my happiness before sunrise! The day cometh: so let us part!—

To one man, lonesomeness is the flight of the sick one; to another, it is the flight FROM the sick ones.