O summer garden!

I've become a wicked hunter!— Look how much

New friends! Come! It's time! It's time!

Now we celebrate together, certain of victory,

Am I another? A stranger to myself?

Keep your door open to new friends!

This song is over—the sweet cry of longing

Love once inscribed on it, the faded ones?

O noon of life! Second time of youth!

O noon of life! O time to celebrate!

The one you wanted?

But now alas! No arrow is dangerous

Here among this most remote realm of ice and rock—

What once tied us together, one hope's bond —

Nothing but ghosts of friends!

The feast of feasts:

At noon was the time one became two ...

Let the old go! Let the memories go!

Where are you friends? Come! It's time! It's time!

Where no one lives, in desolate polar zones,

And my honey—who has tasted it? .....

My realm—what realm stretches further?

Those I longed for,

You turn away?— O heart, you have borne enough,

Sprung from myself?

I compare it to parchment that the hand

Unlearned man and god, curse and prayer?

No longer friends, they are—what should I call them?—

In the heights my table was set for you: —

Full of love and fear!

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting!

Died in my mouth—

Is afraid to grasp,—like parchment that is discolored, burnt.

Wounded and stopped by his own victory?

— There you are, friends!— Alas, but I am not

The friend of noon—no! do not ask who he is—

I await friends, ready day and night,

Who still reads the signs

— My old friends! Now how pale you look!

Become a ghost who crosses glaciers?

A wrestler, who too often subdued himself?

Once you were young, now—you are younger!

That knock at my heart and window nightly,

Here one has to be a hunter and chamois-like.

My bow is bent!

You hesitate, amazed—oh, you are quite sullen!

To the grey yonder of the abyss?

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting: —

That look at me and say: "were we once friends?" —

I await friends, ready day and night

That they have aged has driven them away:

Those I deemed changed into my kin,

I—am no longer the same? Hands, face, gait have changed?

And what I am, to you friends—I am not?

Now the world laughs, the dread curtain is rent,

The strongest was he who drew his bow like this— —:

No, leave! Do not be angry! You—cannot live here:

Only he who changes remains akin to me.

I sought where the most biting wind blows?

As that arrow,—away from here! For your own good! .....

The wedding has come for light and darkness .....

I learned to live

— O withered word, once fragrant as the rose!

O summer garden!

O longing of youth that misunderstood itself!

A sorceror did it, the friend at the right time,

Too often resisted his own strength,

Friend Zarathustra has come, the guest of guests!

Your hope stayed strong:

Who lives so close to the stars