Awestruck at the sight of the mysteries of the earth, thus unveiled before my unworthy eye, I said to my Companion, "
Behold, I am become as a God.
It is impossible for an Englishman to
behold these distant colonies, without a high pride and satisfaction.
He tore the golden brooches that upheld Her queenly robes, upraised them high and smote Full on his eye-balls, uttering words like these: "No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, Deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; Henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see Those ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those Whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know." Such was the burden of his moan, whereto, Not once but oft, he struck with his hand uplift His eyes, and at each stroke the ensanguined orbs Bedewed his beard, not oozing drop by drop, But one black gory downpour, thick as hail.
SECOND MESSENGER He cries, "Unbar the doors and let all Thebes Behold the slayer of his sire, his mother's--" That shameful word my lips may not repeat.
Though I cannot behold you, I must weep In thinking of the evil days to come, The slights and wrongs that men will put upon you.
In short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the universe than that vast "clod of the valley" which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not
behold it in operation.
For a time, the Indian fable seemed realized: he had attained that height from which the Blackfoot warrior, after death, first catches a view of the land of souls, and
beholds the happy hunting grounds spread out below him, brightening with the abodes of the free and generous spirits.
For thine animals know it well, O Zarathustra, who thou art and must become: behold, THOU ART THE TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RETURN,--that is now THY fate!
Behold, we know what thou teachest: that all things eternally return, and ourselves with them, and that we have already existed times without number, and all things with us.
And if thou wouldst now die, O Zarathustra, behold, we know also how thou wouldst then speak to thyself:--but thine animals beseech thee not to die yet!
So now again, as buoyantly as ever, he went forth to behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.
But Ernest turned away, melancholy, and almost despondent: for this was the saddest of his disappointments, to behold a man who might have fulfilled the prophecy, and had not willed to do so.