| Who would here descend?
|
| How soon is he swallowed up by the depths?
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| Thou, Zarathustra, still lovesth the abysses
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| Lovesth them as doth the fir-tree
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| The fir flings its roots
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| And the rock itself gazes
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| Shuddering at the depths
|
| The fir pauses before the abysses
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| Where all around
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| Would feign descent amid the impatience of wild
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| Rolling, leaping torrents
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| It waits so patient, stern, and silent, lonely
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| Lonely, who would venture here
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| To be guest, to be thy guest
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| A bird of prey, per chance
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| Joyous at other’s misfortune
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| Will cling persistent to the heir of the steadfast watcher
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| With frenzied laughter, a vulture’s laughter
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| Wherefor so steadfast?
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| Mocks he so cruel
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| He must have wings who loves the abyss
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| He must not stay on the cliff
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| As thou, who hangesth there
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| Oh Zarathustra
|
| Cruelest nimrod!
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| Of late still a hunter of God
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| A spider’s web, to capture virtue
|
| An arrow of evil
|
| Now hunted by thyself
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| Thine own prey
|
| Caught in the grip of thine own soul
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| Now lonely to me and thee
|
| Twofold in thine own knowledge
|
| 'Mid a hundred mirrors
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| False to thyself
|
| 'Mid a hundred memories
|
| Uncertain and weary from every wound
|
| Shivering at every frost
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| Throttled in thine own noose
|
| Self-knower
|
| Self-hangman
|
| Why didsth bind thyself
|
| With the noose of thy wisdom?
|
| Why luresth thyself
|
| To the old serpent’s paradise?
|
| Why stowesth into thyself
|
| Thyself?
|
| A sick man now
|
| Sick of serpent’s poison
|
| A captive now
|
| Who has drawn the hardest lot
|
| In thine own shaft
|
| Now doesth thou workesth
|
| In thine own cavern?
|
| Digging at thyself
|
| Helpless quite
|
| Stiff, a cold corpse
|
| Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens
|
| Overburdened by thyself
|
| A knower, a self-knower
|
| The wise Zarathustra
|
| Thou soughtesth the heaviest burden
|
| So foundesth thou thyself
|
| And cansth not shake thyself off
|
| Watching
|
| Crouching
|
| One that stands up right no more
|
| Thou with grow deformed
|
| Even in thy grave
|
| Deformed spirit
|
| And of late, still so proud
|
| On all the stilts of thy pride
|
| Of late, still the godless hermit
|
| The hermit with one comrade, the devil
|
| The scarlet prince of every devilmen’s
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| Now between two nothings
|
| Huddled up a questionmark
|
| A weary riddle
|
| A riddle for vultures
|
| They will solve thee
|
| They hunger already for thy solution
|
| They flutter already about their riddle
|
| About thee
|
| The doomed one
|
| Oh Zarathustra
|
| Self-knower
|
| Self-hangman |