1
Midday of Life! Oh, season of delight! My summer’s park! Uneaseful joy to look, to lurk, to hark— I peer for friends, am ready day and night— Where linger ye, my friends? The time is right!
2
Is not the glacier’s grey today for you Rose-garlanded? The brooklet seeks you, wind, cloud, with longing thread And thrust themselves yet higher to the blue, To spy for you from farthest eagle’s view.
3
My table was spread out for you on high— Who dwelleth so Star-near, so near the grisly pit below?— My realm—what realm hath wider boundary? My honey—who hath sipped its fragrancy?
4
Friends, ye are there! Woe me—yet I am not He whom ye seek? Ye stare and stop—better your wrath could speak! I am not I? Hand, gait, face, changed? And what I am, to you my friends, now am I not?
5
Am I an other? Strange am I to Me? Yet from Me sprung? A wrestler, by himself too oft self-wrung? Hindering too oft my own self’s potency, Wounded and hampered by self-victory?
6