"To cast myself up unto thy height—that is my profundity! To hide myself in thy purity—that is mine innocence.
"We have been friends from the beginning, thou and I. Sorrow and horror and soil we share: even the sun is common to us.
"We speak not to each other, for we know too many things. We stare silently at each other; by smiles do we communicate our knowledge.
"And all my wanderings and mountain-climbings—these were but a necessity and a makeshift of the helpless one. To fly is the one thing that my will willeth, to fly into thee.
"And what have I hated more than passing clouds and all that defileth thee!
"The passing clouds I loathe—those stealthy cats of prey. They take from thee and me what we have in common—that immense, that infinite saying of Yea and Amen.
"These mediators and mixers we loathe—the passing clouds.
"Rather would I sit in a tub, with the sky shut out; rather would I sit in the abyss without a sky, than see thee, sky of Light, denied by wandering clouds!
"And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged gold wires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their bellies.
"An angry drummer, because they bereave me of thy Yea and Amen!—thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou bright, thou abyss of Light! And because they bereave thee of my Yea and Amen.