A vapor, heavy, hueless, formless, cold! Leave it to time! Leave it to time! --I hear that, and I hear around me the laughter of mocking demons. It startles my soul--but no longer to rage as it used to. I sit and stare at it with a great, heavy numbness possessing me. * * * * * January 12th. I am still reading Nietzsche. I think I shall read all that he has written. I am always kept aware of the limitations, but he is a tremendous man. Can you guess how this took hold of me?-- * * * * * THE GRAVE-SONG “There lies the island of graves, the silent; there are also the graves of my youth. Thither will I carry an evergreen wreath of life.” Thus resolving in my heart, I went over the sea.-- Oh ye visions and apparitions of my youth! Oh all ye glances of love, ye godlike moments! How swiftly you died in me! I remember you to-day as my dead. From you, my dearest dead, there comes to me a sweet odor, heart-melting, tear-melting. Truly it shakes and melts the heart of the lonely seaman. Still am I the richest and the most to be envied--I, the most lonely. For I _had_ you, and you have me still; say, to whom fell, as to me, such rose-apples from the trees?... _Me_ to kill, they strangled you, you song-birds of my hopes. Yea, at you, the dearest, shot wickedness its arrows--to strike my heart!... This word will I speak to my enemies: “What is all murder of man beside that which ye did to me?” Thus, in the good hour, spake my purity: “Godlike shall all being be to me.” Then ye fell upon me with your foul spirits; ah, whither now hath the good hour fled? “All days shall be holy to me”--so spake once the wisdom of my youth; truly the speech of a happy wisdom. But then you enemies stole away my nights and sold them to sleepless torment; ah, whither now hath the happy wisdom fled?... As a blind man once I went a blissful way; then you threw rubbish in the blind man's way; and now he is weary of the old blind ascendings.... And once would I dance as never had I danced before; above all the heavens away would I dance. And then you lured away my dearest singer!... Only in the dance can I speak metaphors of the highest things:--and now my highest metaphor remained unspoken in my limbs! Unspoken and undelivered remained my highest hope! And there died all the visions and solaces of my youth! * * * * * That thing brought the tears down my cheeks. It is what my soul has cried all day and all night--that I see all my joy and all my beauty going! It is the fearful, the agonizing _waiting_ that does it. I know it--I put it down--there is nothing kills the soul in a man so much as that. When you wait your life is outside of yourself; you hope,--you are at the mercy of others--at the mercy of indifference and accident and God knows what. But again I cry, “What can I do? If there is anything I have not done--tell me! Tell me!”