All joy wanteth the eternity of all things, it wanteth honey, it wanteth lees, it wanteth drunken midnight, it wanteth graves, it wanteth grave-tears’ consolation, it wanteth gilded evening-red—
—WHAT doth not joy want! it is thirstier, heartier, hungrier, more frightful, more mysterious, than all woe: it wanteth ITSELF, it biteth into ITSELF, the ring’s will writheth in it,—
—It wanteth love, it wanteth hate, it is over-rich, it bestoweth, it throweth away, it beggeth for some one to take from it, it thanketh the taker, it would fain be hated,—
—So rich is joy that it thirsteth for woe, for hell, for hate, for shame, for the lame, for the WORLD,—for this world, Oh, ye know it indeed!
Ye higher men, for you doth it long, this joy, this irrepressible, blessed joy—for your woe, ye failures! For failures, longeth all eternal joy.
For joys all want themselves, therefore do they also want grief! O happiness, O pain! Oh break, thou heart! Ye higher men, do learn it, that joys want eternity.
—Joys want the eternity of ALL things, they WANT DEEP, PROFOUND ETERNITY!
What the critics said
Brandes says that the midnight clock's song closing the Second Dance Song, interpreted line by line in Part IV, concentrates Nietzsche's esoteric doctrine in its shortest formula: joy and woe are inseparable, saying Yea to one joy is saying Yea to all woe, and all joy wants deep eternity.
Ludovici declines to fix an interpretation of the drunken song but notes that recurrence appears here for the last time: all delight longs for repetition, and the man who sees a joyful meaning in existence must cry 'Again!' to all his life, as a child does.