be; all that
is with the Past: the Past is never to return!

* * * * *

Speak, whosoever thou mayst be, and tell me in what thou believest! It
is easier to lose thy life than to invent a faith; to awaken any belief
in it!

Shame upon you all, great and small, for all things pursue their own
course in defiance of your schemes! You may be mean and wretched,
without hearts and without brains, yet the world hastens to its allotted
destiny; it hurries you on whether you will or no, throws you in the
dust, tosses you into wild confusion, or whirls you in resistless
circles, which cease not until they grow into dances of Death! But the
world rolls on--on; clouds and storms arise and vanish; then it grows
slippery--new couples join the dance of Death--they totter--fall--lost
in an abyss of blood--for it is slippery-blood-human blood is gushing
everywhere, as if the path to peace led through a charnel house!

* * * * *

Behold the crowds of people thronging the gates of the cities, the
hills, the valleys, and resting beneath the shadows of the trees! Tents
are spread about, long boards are placed on the trunks of fallen trees
or on pikes and sticks to serve as tables; they are covered with meat
and drink, the full cups pass from hand to hand, and, as they touch the
eager mouth, threats, oaths, and curses press forth from the hot lips.
Faster and faster fly the cups from hand to hand, beaded, bubbling,
glittering, always filling, striking, tinkling, ringing, as they circle
among the millions: Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the cup of drunkenness and
joy!

* * * * *

How fiercely they are agitated; how impatiently they wait! They murmur,
they break into riotous noise!

Poor wretches! scarcely covered with their miserable rags, the seal of
weary labors deeply stamped upon their sunburnt faces set with uncombed,
bristling hair, the sweat starting from their rugged brows, their strong
and horny hands armed with scythes, axes, hammers, hatchets, spades!

Look at that broad youth with the pickaxe; at the slight one with the
sword. Here is one who holds aloft a glittering pike; another who
brandishes a massive club with his brawny arm! There under the willows a
boy crams cherries into his mouth with the one hand, and with the other
punches the tree with a long, sharp awl. Women are also there, wives,
mothers, daughters, poor and hungry as