VENICE
At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music --
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
-- Did anyone listen to it?
--Friedrich Nietzsche [1888]
Ecce Homo [trans. Walter Kaufmann]
Facing west from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of
maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost
circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of
Kashmere,
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the
hero,
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice
islands,
Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,
Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
--Walt Whitman [1860]
Leaves of Grass
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater
than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back
in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
--Walt Whitman [1860]
Leaves of Grass
On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner,
He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.
--Walt Whitman [1867]
Leaves of Grass
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns
before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
--Walt Whitman [1865]
Leaves of Grass
Once more before I wander on
and turn my eyes to distant lands,
in solitude I raise my hands
to you on high to whom I fly,
whom in my heart's profundity
I hallowed altars to implore
that evermore
your voice might call again to me.
On them is glowing, inscribed deep,
the word: Unto the Unknown God.
His am I, although in the sinners' squad
until this hour I did keep:
his am I, and I feel the chains
that in my fight I can't untie
and, though I fly,
force me to serve the god again.
I want to know you, Unknown One,
you that are reaching deep into my soul
and ravaging my life, a savage gale,
you Inconceivable and yet Related One!
I want to know you -- even serve.
--Friedrich Nietzsche [1864]
Twenty German Poets [trans. Walter Kaufmann]