University of Virginia Library

8.

God's woe is deeper, thou strange world! Grasp at God's woe, not at me! What am I! A drunken sweet lyre,-

-A midnight-lyre, a bell-frog, which no one understandeth, but which must speak before deaf ones, ye higher men! For ye do not understand me!

Gone! Gone! O youth! O noontide! O afternoon! Now have come evening and night and midnight,-the dog howleth, the wind:

-Is the wind not a dog? It whineth, it barketh, it howleth. Ah! Ah! how she sigheth! how she laugheth, how she wheezeth and panteth, the midnight!

How she just now speaketh soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become overawake? doth she ruminate?

-Her woe doth she ruminate over, in a dream, the old, deep midnight-and still more her joy. For joy, although woe be deep, joy is deeper still than grief can be.