Before Sunrise

O heaven above me, thou pure, thou deep heaven! Thou abyss of light! Gazing on thee, I tremble with divine desires.

Up to thy height to toss myself—that is my depth! In thy purity to hide myself—that is mine innocence!

The God veileth his beauty: thus hidest thou thy stars. Thou speakest not: thus proclaimest thou thy wisdom unto me.

Mute o’er the raging sea hast thou risen for me today; thy love and thy modesty make a revelation unto my raging soul.

In that thou camest unto me beautiful, veiled in thy beauty, in that thou spakest unto me mutely, obvious in thy wisdom:

Oh, how could I fail to divine all the modesty of thy soul! Before the sun didst thou come unto me—the lonesomest one.

We have been friends from the beginning: to us are grief, gruesomeness and ground common; even the sun is common to us.

We do not speak to each other, because we know too much— we keep silent to each other, we smile our knowledge to each other.

Art thou not the light of my fire? Hast thou not the sister-soul of mine insight?

Together did we learn everything; together did we learn to ascend beyond ourselves to ourselves, and to smile uncloudedly—

Uncloudedly to smile down out of luminous eyes and out of miles of distance, when under us constraint and purpose and guilt steam like rain.

And wandered I alone, for what did my soul hunger by night and in labyrinthine paths? And climbed I mountains, whom did I ever seek, if not thee, upon mountains?

And all my wandering and mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhappy one; to fly only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly into thee!

And what have I hated more than passing clouds, and whatever tainteth thee? And mine own hatred have I even hated, because it tainted thee!

The passing clouds I detest—those stealthy cats of prey; they take from thee and me what is common to us—the vast unbounded Yea- and Amen-saying.

These mediators and mixers we detest—the passing clouds: those half-and-half ones, that have neither learned to bless nor to curse from the heart.

Rather will I sit in a tub under a closed heaven, rather will I sit in the abyss without heaven, than see thee, thou luminous heaven, tainted with passing clouds!

And oft have I longed to pin them fast with the jagged goldwires of lightning, that I might, like the thunder, beat the drum upon their kettle-bellies—

An angry drummer, because they rob me of thy Yea and Amen, thou heaven above me, thou pure, thou luminous heaven! Thou abyss of light, because they rob thee of my Yea and Amen!