fore you, it hath just ITS
hour; in vain do I struggle with this evil spirit.

Unto all of you, whatever honours ye like to assume in your names,
whether ye call yourselves 'the free spirits' or 'the conscientious,'
or 'the penitents of the spirit,' or 'the unfettered,' or 'the great
longers,'--

--Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to
whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and
swaddling clothes--unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil
favourable.

I know you, ye higher men, I know him,--I know also this fiend whom I
love in spite of me, this Zarathustra: he himself often seemeth to me
like the beautiful mask of a saint,

--Like a new strange mummery in which mine evil spirit, the melancholy
devil, delighteth:--I love Zarathustra, so doth it often seem to me, for
the sake of mine evil spirit.--

But already doth IT attack me and constrain me, this spirit of
melancholy, this evening-twilight devil: and verily, ye higher men, it
hath a longing--

--Open your eyes!--it hath a longing to come NAKED, whether male or
female, I do not yet know: but it cometh, it constraineth me, alas! open
your wits!

The day dieth out, unto all things cometh now the evening, also unto
the best things; hear now, and see, ye higher men, what devil--man or
woman--this spirit of evening-melancholy is!"

Thus spake the old magician, looked cunningly about him, and then seized
his harp.

3.

In evening's limpid air,
What time the dew's soothings
Unto the earth downpour,
Invisibly and unheard--
For tender shoe-gear wear
The soothing dews, like all that's kind-gentle--:
Bethinkst thou then, bethinkst thou, burning heart,
How once thou thirstedest
For heaven's kindly teardrops and dew's down-droppings,
All singed and weary thirstedest,
What time on yellow grass-pathways
Wicked, occidental sunny glances
Through sombre trees about thee sported,
Blindingly sunny glow-glances, gladly-hurting?

"Of TRUTH the wooer? Thou?"--so taunted they--
"Nay! Merely poet!
A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling,
That aye must lie,
That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie:
For booty lusting,
Motley masked,
Self-hidden, shrouded,
Himself his booty--
HE--of truth the wooer?
Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet!
Just motley speaking,
From mask of fool con