I tell you, you gloomy ones,
that life is beautiful.
Life is beautiful
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.

I tell you, you nihilists,
one draws breath only once,
passes into and fades out of life only once.
Yet you are to tell us it is worthless,
this gift given to us all by chance?

I tell you, you Christians,
and all your compatriots
who hate the flesh and the earth,
who promise more life through
sons of virgins and husbands of children,
that nothing awaits after death.

"Memento mori!”  
Why must you always
chime this in our ears?
Why must you fill
men with such anxious fears?
Many a man rules his life to this,
dreads and gasps and despairs to this,
prays that he may never come to this,
but you delude him on,
promising life after life.

I tell you, that
when we die, we cease ourselves to be.
Our senses stop their feeling,
our hearts stop their beating,
our brains stop their thinking,
and without those functions,
there ends a man.

So there are no souls
to greet gods in heavens,
nor any demons
to meet in hells,
only the ground we stand on,
and the caskets underneath.

Is this frightening?
Maddening, to think we must one day
cease to be and become nothing?
But death is not nothing;
Death is only a new dance of atoms.

When one thing tumbles,
it returns to the earth,
through one step or another,
to waltz and dissemble and collide
to make new things and again asunder.
With death, one only  
plays one's part
on the grand stage of things.

Do not be afraid then,
of death;
do not let it frighten you,
that you will be
pointless, forgotten, or condemned.
Do not let it terrify you
into leaving your life unlived.

And so I tell you,
you gloomy ones,
you Christians, you nihilists, you sufferers,
remember that you must live.
Embrace life,
this shortness of time,
love every moment of your being,
in all its depths of
suffering and misery and pain,
in all its depths of
striving and joy and pleasure.