O noon of life! O time to celebrate!

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting!

To the grey yonder of the abyss?

O summer garden!

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

The one you wanted?

Only he who changes remains akin to me.

O summer garden!

— O withered word, once fragrant as the rose!

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

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

O noon of life! Second time of youth!

That knock at my heart and window nightly,

— My old friends! Now how pale you look!

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

I sought where the most biting wind blows?

And my honey—who has tasted it? .....

O longing of youth that misunderstood itself!

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

Now we celebrate together, certain of victory,

Once you were young, now—you are younger!

My bow is bent!

The feast of feasts:

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

Full of love and fear!

Those I longed for,

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

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

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

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting: —

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

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

Who lives so close to the stars

At noon was the time one became two ...

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

In the heights my table was set for you: —

I await friends, ready day and night

Wounded and stopped by his own victory?

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

Who still reads the signs

I learned to live

Your hope stayed strong:

That they have aged has driven them away:

Too often resisted his own strength,

Here among this most remote realm of ice and rock—

A wrestler, who too often subdued himself?

Am I another? A stranger to myself?

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

Friend Zarathustra has come, the guest of guests!

Unlearned man and god, curse and prayer?

My realm—what realm stretches further?

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

I compare it to parchment that the hand

Died in my mouth—

Love once inscribed on it, the faded ones?

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

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

Keep your door open to new friends!

Nothing but ghosts of friends!

Become a ghost who crosses glaciers?

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

Let the old go! Let the memories go!

Where no one lives, in desolate polar zones,

This song is over—the sweet cry of longing

I await friends, ready day and night,

But now alas! No arrow is dangerous

Now the world laughs, the dread curtain is rent,

Those I deemed changed into my kin,

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

Sprung from myself?