The Great Longing

O my soul, I have taught thee to say ‘today’ as ‘once on a time’ and ‘formerly’, and to dance thy measure over every Here and There and Yonder.

O my soul, I delivered thee from all by-places, I brushed down from thee dust and spiders and twilight.

O my soul, I washed the petty shame and the by-place virtue from thee, and persuaded thee to stand naked before the eyes of the sun.

With the storm that is called ‘spirit’ did I blow over thy surging sea; all clouds did I blow away from it; I strangled even the strangler called ‘sin’.

O my soul, I gave thee the right to say Nay like the storm, and to say Yea as the open heaven saith Yea; calm as the light remainest thou, and now walkest through denying storms.

O my soul, I restored to thee liberty over the created and the uncreated; and who knoweth, as thou knowest, the voluptuousness of the future?

O my soul, I taught thee the contempt which doth not come like worm-eating; the great, the loving contempt, which loveth most where it contemneth most.

O my soul, I taught thee so to persuade that thou persuadest even the grounds themselves to thee; like the sun, which persuadeth even the sea to its height.

O my soul, I have taken from thee all obeying and knee-bending and homage-paying; I have myself given thee the names, ‘Change of need’ and ‘Fate’.

O my soul, I have given thee new names and gay-coloured playthings, I have called thee ‘Fate’ and ‘the Circuit of circuits’ and ‘the Navel-string of time’ and ‘the Azure bell’.

O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom.

O my soul, every sun shed I upon thee, and every night and every silence and every longing — then grewest thou up for me as a vine.

O my soul, exuberant and heavy dost thou now stand forth, a vine with swelling udders and full clusters of brown golden grapes —

Filled and weighted by thy happiness, waiting from super-abundance, and yet ashamed of thy waiting.

O my soul, there is nowhere a soul which could be more loving and more comprehensive and more extensive! Where could future and past be closer together than with thee?

O my soul, I have given thee everything, and all my hands have become empty by thee — and now! Now sayest thou to me, smiling and full of melancholy: ‘Which of us oweth thanks?

Doth the giver not owe thanks because the receiver received? Is bestowing not a necessity? Is receiving not — pitying?’

O my soul, I understand the smiling of thy melancholy; thine over-abundance itself now stretcheth out longing hands!

Thy fulness looketh forth over raging seas, and seeketh and waiteth; the longing of over-fulness looketh forth from the smiling heaven of thine eyes!