nally dawn for me,
the snow-bearded winter-sky, the hoary one, the white-head,--

--The winter-sky, the silent winter-sky, which often stifleth even its
sun!

Did I perhaps learn from it the long clear silence? Or did it learn it
from me? Or hath each of us devised it himself?

Of all good things the origin is a thousandfold,--all good roguish
things spring into existence for joy: how could they always do so--for
once only!

A good roguish thing is also the long silence, and to look, like the
winter-sky, out of a clear, round-eyed countenance:--

--Like it to stifle one's sun, and one's inflexible solar will: verily,
this art and this winter-roguishness have I learnt WELL!

My best-loved wickedness and art is it, that my silence hath learned not
to betray itself by silence.

Clattering with diction and dice, I outwit the solemn assistants: all
those stern watchers, shall my will and purpose elude.

That no one might see down into my depth and into mine ultimate
will--for that purpose did I devise the long clear silence.

Many a shrewd one did I find: he veiled his countenance and made his
water muddy, that no one might see therethrough and thereunder.

But precisely unto him came the shrewder distrusters and nut-crackers:
precisely from him did they fish his best-concealed fish!

But the clear, the honest, the transparent--these are for me the wisest
silent ones: in them, so PROFOUND is the depth that even the clearest
water doth not--betray it.--

Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above
me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!

And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold--lest my
soul should be ripped up?

MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs--all those
enviers and injurers around me?

Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls--how
COULD their envy endure my happiness!

Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks--and NOT that my
mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!

They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I
also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds.

They commiserate also my accidents and chances:--but MY word saith:
"Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!"

How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it
accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and