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!
