aited in vain. The night remained clear and calm, and
happiness itself came nigher and nigher unto him. Towards morning,
however, Zarathustra laughed to his heart, and said mockingly:
"Happiness runneth after me. That is because I do not run after women.
Happiness, however, is a woman."

XLVIII. BEFORE SUNRISE.

O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light!
Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.

Up to thy height to toss myself--that is MY depth! In thy purity to hide
myself--that is MINE innocence!

The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest
not: THUS proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.

Mute o'er the raging sea hast thou risen for me to-day; thy love and thy
modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.

In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that
thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! BEFORE the
sun didst thou come unto me--the lonesomest one.

We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness,
and ground common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much--: we keep
silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine
insight?

Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond
ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly:--

--Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of
distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like
rain.

And wandered I alone, for WHAT did my soul hunger by night and in
labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, WHOM did I ever seek, if
not thee, upon mountains?

And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely,
and a makeshift of the unhandy one:--to FLY only, wanteth mine entire
will, to fly into THEE!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth
thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

The passing clouds I detest--those stealthy cats of prey: they take
from thee and me what is common to us--the vast unbounded Yea- and
Amen-saying.

These mediators and mixers we detest--the passing clouds: those
half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from
the heart.

Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed h