Oh ye visions and apparitions of my youth! Oh all ye glances of love, ye godlike moments! How swiftly you died in me! I remember you to-day as my dead.
From you, my dearest dead, there comes to me a sweet odor, heart-melting, tear-melting. Truly it shakes and melts the heart of the lonely seaman.
Still am I the richest and the most to be envied—I, the most lonely. For I had you, and you have me still; say, to whom fell, as to me, such rose-apples from the trees?...
Me to kill, they strangled you, you song-birds of my hopes. Yea, at you, the dearest, shot wickedness its arrows—to strike my heart!...
This word will I speak to my enemies: “What is all murder of man beside that which ye did to me?”
Thus, in the good hour, spake my purity: “Godlike shall all being be to me.”
Then ye fell upon me with your foul spirits; ah, whither now hath the good hour fled?
“All days shall be holy to me”—so spake once the wisdom of my youth; truly the speech of a happy wisdom.
But then you enemies stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless torment; ah, whither now hath the happy wisdom fled?...
As a blind man once I went a blissful way; then you threw rubbish in the blind man's way; and now he is weary of the old blind ascendings....