And yet it was this spirit lightning-flash Which robbed me of my last remaining powers. The strongest impulse of my soul hath been Ever to seek for evidence in life Of what my thought hath forced on me as truth. So it befell, as if by chance, that I E'en in those days of misery should prove, And by my own life testify the truth, That cruel truth with all that it involves: Which is, that all our sorrows and our joys Are but results of what we really are. Aye! this is often very hard to bear. CAPESIUS: Incredible seems such experience. What can there be to overshadow truth, For which we search unwearying, and which Unto our spirit firm assurance gives. STRADER: For thee it may be so, but not for me. Thou art acquainted with my curious life. By chance it seemed my parents' plans were crossed. Their purpose was to make a monk of me; And naught so hurt them, they have often said, In all their life as my apostasy. I bore all this, yea and much more besides; Just as one bears the other things in life So long as birth and death appear the bounds Appointed for our earthly pilgrimage. So too my later life and all the hopes That came to naught, to me a picture seemed That only by itself could be explained. Would that the day had never dawned, on which I altered those convictions that I held, For--bear in mind--I have not yet confessed The total burden laid on me by fate. No child was I of those who would have made A monk of me, but an adopted son Chosen by them when but a few days old. My own real parents I have never known, But was a stranger in my very home. Nor less estranged have I remained from all That happened round me in my later life. And now my thought compels me to look back Unto those days of long ago, and see How from myself I stole the world away. For thought is linked with thought to make a chain: A man to whom it hath been thus ordained To be a stranger in the world, before His consciousness had ever dawned in him, This man hath willed this fate upon himself Ere he could will as consequence of thought. And since I stay that which I was at first I know without the shadow of a doubt That all unknowing I am in the power Of forces that control my destiny And that will not reveal themselves to me. Do I need more to give me cruel proof How many veils enshroud mine inmost self? Without false thirst for knowledge, judge this now; Hath my new truth revealed the light to me? It hath, at any rate, brought certainty That I in mine uncertainty must stay. Thus it portrays to me my destiny And like in its own way, is my reply, Half anguish and half bitter mockery. A fearful sense of horror on me grew. Tortured by scorn I must confront my life; And scoffing at the mockery of fate