Your hope stayed strong:

And my honey—who has tasted it? .....

In the heights my table was set for you: —

Who lives so close to the stars

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

My bow is bent!

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

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

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

Am I another? A stranger to myself?

The feast of feasts:

Full of love and fear!

Nothing but ghosts of friends!

Only he who changes remains akin to me.

Now the world laughs, the dread curtain is rent,

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

I await friends, ready day and night,

Died in my mouth—

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting: —

Who still reads the signs

This song is over—the sweet cry of longing

O noon of life! Second time of youth!

Become a ghost who crosses glaciers?

I await friends, ready day and night

Too often resisted his own strength,

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

My realm—what realm stretches further?

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

A wrestler, who too often subdued himself?

Those I longed for,

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

I compare it to parchment that the hand

Unlearned man and god, curse and prayer?

Restless happiness in standing, watching and waiting!

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

— My old friends! Now how pale you look!

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

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

Where no one lives, in desolate polar zones,

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

Let the old go! Let the memories go!

I sought where the most biting wind blows?

Wounded and stopped by his own victory?

Now we celebrate together, certain of victory,

That they have aged has driven them away:

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

O noon of life! O time to celebrate!

At noon was the time one became two ...

O summer garden!

Once you were young, now—you are younger!

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

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

O longing of youth that misunderstood itself!

I learned to live

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

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

To the grey yonder of the abyss?

Here among this most remote realm of ice and rock—

Sprung from myself?

The one you wanted?

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

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

O summer garden!

Friend Zarathustra has come, the guest of guests!

Those I deemed changed into my kin,

Love once inscribed on it, the faded ones?

That knock at my heart and window nightly,

Keep your door open to new friends!

— O withered word, once fragrant as the rose!

But now alas! No arrow is dangerous