University of Virginia Library

6.

Sweet lyre! Sweet lyre! I love thy tone, thy drunken, ranunculine tone!-how long, how far hath come unto me thy tone, from the distance, from the ponds of love!

Thou old clock-bell, thou sweet lyre! Every pain hath torn thy heart, father-pain, fathers'-pain, forefathers'-pain; thy speech hath become ripe,-

-Ripe like the golden autumn and the afternoon, like mine anchorite heart-now sayest thou: The world itself hath become ripe, the grape turneth brown,

-Now doth it wish to die, to die of happiness. Ye higher men, do ye not feel it? There welleth up mysteriously an odour,

-A perfume and odour of eternity, a rosy-blessed, brown, gold-wine-odour of old happiness.

-Of drunken midnight-death happiness, which singeth: the world is deep, and deeper than the day could read!