Thou snow-bearded, silent, winter-sky, thou round-eyed whitehead above me! Oh, thou heavenly simile of my soul and its wantonness!
And MUST I not conceal myself like one who hath swallowed gold—lest my soul should be ripped up?
MUST I not wear stilts, that they may OVERLOOK my long legs—all those enviers and injurers around me?
Those dingy, fire-warmed, used-up, green-tinted, ill-natured souls—how COULD their envy endure my happiness!
Thus do I show them only the ice and winter of my peaks—and NOT that my mountain windeth all the solar girdles around it!
They hear only the whistling of my winter-storms: and know NOT that I also travel over warm seas, like longing, heavy, hot south-winds.
They commiserate also my accidents and chances:—but MY word saith: “Suffer the chance to come unto me: innocent is it as a little child!”
How COULD they endure my happiness, if I did not put around it accidents, and winter-privations, and bear-skin caps, and enmantling snowflakes!
—If I did not myself commiserate their PITY, the pity of those enviers and injurers!
—If I did not myself sigh before them, and chatter with cold, and patiently LET myself be swathed in their pity!
This is the wise waggish-will and good-will of my soul, that it CONCEALETH NOT its winters and glacial storms; it concealeth not its chilblains either.