stealeth to their ear to whisper secrets into it, and
amorous flatteries: of this do they plume and pride themselves, before
all mortals!

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the
poets have dreamed!

And especially ABOVE the heavens: for all Gods are poet-symbolisations,
poet-sophistications!

Verily, ever are we drawn aloft--that is, to the realm of the clouds:
on these do we set our gaudy puppets, and then call them Gods and
Supermen:--

Are not they light enough for those chairs!--all these Gods and
Supermen?--

Ah, how I am weary of all the inadequate that is insisted on as actual!
Ah, how I am weary of the poets!

When Zarathustra so spake, his disciple resented it, but was silent. And
Zarathustra also was silent; and his eye directed itself inwardly, as if
it gazed into the far distance. At last he sighed and drew breath.--

I am of to-day and heretofore, said he thereupon; but something is in me
that is of the morrow, and the day following, and the hereafter.

I became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are
they all unto me, and shallow seas.

They did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling
did not reach to the bottom.

Some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these
have as yet been their best contemplation.

Ghost-breathing and ghost-whisking, seemeth to me all the
jingle-jangling of their harps; what have they known hitherto of the
fervour of tones!--

They are also not pure enough for me: they all muddle their water that
it may seem deep.

And fain would they thereby prove themselves reconcilers: but mediaries
and mixers are they unto me, and half-and-half, and impure!--

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish;
but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.

Thus did the sea give a stone to the hungry one. And they themselves may
well originate from the sea.

Certainly, one findeth pearls in them: thereby they are the more like
hard molluscs. And instead of a soul, I have often found in them salt
slime.

They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the
peacock of peacocks?

Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail;
never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk.

Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its
soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the s