Joy and Sadness

What bold-easy step
Walks through the innermost realm
Of grandame's fairytale garden?

What rousing call does the bugler's
Silver horn cast in the tangle
Of the Saying's deep slumber?

What secret breath
Of melancholy just fled
Nestle's into the soul?

"The first stanza sings of the step as the journey through the realm of Saying. The second stanza sings of the call that awakens Saying. The third stanza sings of the breath that nestles into the soul. Step (that is, way) and call and breath hover around the rule of the word. Its mystery has not only disturbed the soul that formerly was secure. It has also taken away the soul's melancholy which threatened to drag it down. Thus, sadness has vanished from the poet's relation to the word. This sadness concerned only his learning of renunciation. All this would be true if sadness were the mere opposite to joy, if melancholy and sadness were identical.

But the more joyful the joy, the more pure the sadness slumbering within it. The deeper the sadness, the more summoning the joy resting within it. Sadness and joy play into each other. The play itself which attunes the two by letting the remote be near and the near be remote is pain. This is why both, highest joy and deepest sadness, are painful each in its way. But pain so touches the spirit of mortals that the spirit receives its gravity from pain. The gravity keeps mortals with all their wavering at rest in their being. The spirit which answers to pain, the spirit attuned by pain and to pain, is melancholy. It can depress the spirit, but it can also lose its burdensomeness and let its 'secret breath' nestle into the soul, bestow upon it the jewel which arrays it in the precious relation to the word, and with this raiment shelters it."

Heidegger "Words"