The howling storm-blast through the groaning wood,
Wrenching the giant pine, which in its fall
Crashing sweeps down its neighbor trunks and boughs,
While hollow thunder from the hill resounds:
Then thou dost lead me to some shelter’d cave,
Dost there reveal me to myself, and show
Of my own bosom the mysterious depths.
And when with soothing beam, the moon’s pale orb
Full in my view climbs up the pathless sky,
From crag and dewy grove, the silvery forms
Of by-gone ages hover, and assuage
The joy austere of contemplative thought.
Oh, that naught perfect is assign’d to man,
I feel, alas! With this exalted joy,
Which lifts me near, and nearer to the gods,
Thou gav’st me this companion, unto whom
I needs must cling, though cold and insolent,
He still degrades me to myself, and turns
Thy glorious gifts to nothing, with a breath.
He in my bosom with malicious zeal
For that fair image fans a raging fire;
From craving to enjoyment thus I reel,
And in enjoyment languish for desire.
[MEPHISTOPHELES enters.]
MEPHISTOPHELES
Of this lone life have you not had your fill?
How for so long can it have charms for you?
’Tis well enough to try it if you will;
But then away again to something new!
FAUST
Would you could better occupy your leisure,
Than in disturbing thus my hours of joy.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Well! Well! I’ll leave you to yourself with pleasure,
A serious tone you hardly dare employ.
To part from one so crazy, harsh, and cross,
Were not in truth a grievous loss.
The live-long day, for you I toil and fret;
Ne’er from his worship’s face a hint I get,
What pleases him, or what to let alone.
FAUST
Ay truly! that is just the proper tone!
He wearies me, and would with thanks be paid!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Poor Son of Earth, without my aid,
How would thy weary days have flown?
Thee of thy foolish whims I’ve cured,
Thy vain imaginations banished.
And but for me, be well assured,
Thou from this sphere must soon have vanished.
In rocky hollows and in caverns drear,
Why like an owl sit moping here?
Wherefore from dripping stones and moss with ooze embued,
Dost suck, like any toad, thy food?
A rare, sweet pastime. Verily!
The doctor cleaveth still to thee.
FAUST
Dost comprehend what bliss without alloy
From this wild wand’ring in the desert springs? —
Couldst thou but guess the new life-power it brings,
Thou wouldst be fiend enough to envy me my joy.
MEPHISTOPHELES
What super-earthly ecstasy! at night,
To lie in darkness on the dewy height,
Embracing heaven and earth in rapture high,
The soul dilating to a deity;
With prescient yearnings pierce the core of earth,
Feel in your laboring breast the six-days’ birth,
Enjoy, in proud delight what no one knows,
While your love-rapture o’er creation flows —
The earthly lost in beatific vision,
And then the lofty intuition —
(with a gesture)
I need not tell you how — to close!
FAUST
Fie on you!
MEPHISTOPHELES
This displeases you? “For shame!”
You are forsooth entitled to exclaim;
We to chaste ears it seems must not pronounce
What, nathless, the chaste heart cannot renounce.
Well, to be brief, the joy as fit occasions rise,
I grudge you not, of specious lies.
But long this mood thou’lt not retain.
Already thou’rt again outworn,
And should this last, thou wilt be torn
By frenzy or remorse and pain.
Enough of this! Thy true love dwells apart,
And all to her seems flat and tame;
Alone thine image fills her heart,
She loves thee with an all-devouring flame.
First came thy passion with o’erpowering rush,
Like mountain torrent, swollen by the melted snow;
Full in her heart didst pour the sudden gush,
Now has thy brooklet ceased to flow.
Instead of sitting throned midst forests wild,
It would become so great a lord
To comfort the enamor’d child,
And the young monkey for her love reward.
To her the hours seem miserably long;
She from the window sees the clouds float by
As o’er the lofty city-walls they fly.
“If I a birdie were!” so runs her song,
Half through the night and all day long.
Cheerful sometimes, more oft at heart full sore;
Fairly outwept seem now her tears,
Anon she tranquil is, or so appears,
And love-sick evermore.
FAUST
Snake! Serpent vile!
MEPHISTOPHELES (aside)
Good! If I catch thee with my guile!
FAUST
Vile reprobate! go get thee hence;
Forbear the lovely girl to name!
Nor in my half-distracted sense
Kindle anew the smouldering flame!
MEPHISTOPHELES
What wouldest thou! She thinks you’ve taken flight;
It seems, she’s partly in the right.
FAUST
I’m near her still — and should I distant rove,
Her I can ne’er forget, ne’er lose her love;
And all things touch’d by those sweet lips of hers,
Even the very Host, my envy stirs.
MEPHISTOPHELES
’Tis well! I oft have envied you indeed,
The twin-pair that among the roses feed.
FAUST
Pander, avaunt!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Go to! I laugh, the while you rail;
The power which fashion’d youth and maid
Well understood the noble trade;
So neither shall occasion fail.
But hence! — A mighty grief I trow!
Unto thy lov’d one’s chamber thou
And not to death shouldst go.
FAUST
What is to me heaven’s joy within her arms?
What though my life her bosom warms! —
Do I not ever feel her woe?
The outcast am I not, unhoused, unblest,
Inhuman monster, without aim or rest,
Who, like the greedy surge, from rock to rock,
Sweeps down the dread abyss with desperate shock?
While she, within her lowly cot, which graced
The Alpine slope, beside the waters wild,
Her homely cares in that small world embraced,
Secluded lived, a simple artless child.
Was’t not enough, in thy delirious whirl
To blast the stedfast rocks!
Her, and her peace as well,
Must I, God-hated one, to ruin hurl!
Dost claim this holocaust, remorseless Hell!
Fiend, help me to cut short the hours of dread!
Let what must happen, happen speedily!
Her direful doom fall crushing on my head,
And into ruin let her plunge with me!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Why how again it seethes and
glows!
Away, thou fool! Her torment ease!
When such a head no issue sees,
It pictures straight the final close.
Long life to him who boldly dares!
A devil’s pluck thou’rt wont to show;
As for a devil who despairs —
Nothing I find so mawkish here below.
MARGARET’S ROOM
MARGARET (alone at her spinning wheel)
My peace is gone,
My heart is sore,
I find it never,
And nevermore!
Where him I have not,
Is the grave; and all
The world to me
Is turned to gall.
My wilder’d brain
Is overwrought;
My feeble senses
Are distraught.
My peace is gone,
My heart is sore,
I find it never,
And nevermore!
For him from the window
I gaze, at home;
For him and him only
Abroad I roam.
His lofty step,
His bearing high,
The smile of his lip,
The power of his eye,
His witching words,
Their tones of bliss,
His hand’s fond pressure,
And ah — his kiss!
My peace is gone,
My heart is sore,
I find it never,
And nevermore.
My bosom aches
To feel him near;
Ah, could I clasp
And fold him here!
Kiss him and kiss him
Again would I,
And on his kisses
I fain would die.
MARTHA’S GARDEN
MARGARET and FAUST
MARGARET
Promise me, Henry!
FAUST
What I can!
MARGARET
How thy religion fares, I fain would hear.
Thou art a good kind-hearted man,
Only that way not well-disposed, I fear.
FAUST
Forbear, my child! Thou feelest thee I love;
My heart, my blood I’d give, my love to prove,
And none would of their faith or church bereave.
MARGARET
That’s not enough, we must ourselves believe!
FAUST
Must we?
MARGARET
Ah, could I but thy soul inspire!
Thou honorest not the sacraments, alas!
FAUST
I honor them.
MARGARET
But yet without desire;
’Tis long since thou hast been either to shrift or mass.
Dost thou believe in God?
FAUST
My darling, who dares say?
Yes, I in God believe.
Question or priest or sage, and they
Seem, in the answer you receive,
To mock the questioner.
MARGARET
Then thou dost not believe?
FAUST
Sweet one! my meaning do not misconceive!
Him who dare name,
And who proclaim —
Him I believe?
Who that can feel,
His heart can steel,
To say: I believe him not?
The All-embracer,
All-sustainer,
Holds and sustains he not
Thee, me, himself?
Lifts not the Heaven its dome above?
Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie?
And, beaming tenderly with looks of love,
Climb not the everlasting stars on high?
Do we not gaze into each other’s eyes?
Nature’s impenetrable agencies,
Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain,
Viewless, or visible to mortal ken,
Around thee weaving their mysterious chain?
Fill thence thy heart, how large soe’er it be;
And in the feeling when thou utterly art blest,
Then call it, what thou wilt —
Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God!
I have no name for it!
’Tis feeling all;
Name is but sound and smoke
Shrouding the glow of heaven.
MARGARET
All this is doubtless good and fair;
Almost the same the parson says,
Only in slightly different phrase.
FAUST
Beneath Heaven’s sunshine, everywhere,
This is the utterance of the human heart;
Each in his language doth the like impart;
Then why not I in mine?
MARGARET
What thus I hear
Sounds plausible, yet I’m not reconciled;
There’s something wrong about it; much I fear
That thou art not a Christian.
FAUST
My sweet child!
MARGARET
Alas! it long hath sorely troubled me,
To see thee in such odious company.
FAUST
How so?
MARGARET
The man who comes with thee, I hate,
Yea, in my spirit’s inmost depths abhor;
As his loath’d visage, in my life before,
Naught to my heart e’er gave a pang so great.
FAUST
Him fear not, my sweet love!
MARGARET
His presence chills my blood.
Toward all beside I have a kindly mood;
Yet, though I yearn to gaze on thee, I feel
At sight of him strange horror o’er me steal;
That he’s a villain my conviction’s strong.
May Heaven forgive me, if I do him wrong!
FAUST
Yet such strange fellows in the world must be!
MARGARET
I would not live with such an one as he.
If for a moment he but enter here,
He looks around him with a mocking sneer,
And malice ill-conceal’d;
That he with naught on earth can sympathize is clear;
Upon his brow ’tis legibly revealed
That to his heart no living soul is dear.
So blest I feel, within thine arms,
So warm and happy — free from all alarms;
And still my heart doth close when he comes near.
FAUST
Foreboding angel! check thy fear!
MARGARET
It so o’ermasters me that when,
Or wheresoe’er, his step I hear,
I almost think, no more I love thee then.
Besides, when he is near, I ne’er could pray.
This eats into my heart; with thee
The same, my Henry, it must be.
FAUST
This is antipathy!
MARGARET
I must away.
FAUST
For one brief hour then may I never rest,
And heart to heart, and soul to soul be pressed?
MARGARET
Ah, if I slept alone! Tonight
The bolt I fain would leave undrawn for thee;
But then my mother’s sleep is light,
Were we surprised by her, ah me!
Upon the spot I should be dead.
FAUST
Dear angel! there’s no cause for dread.
Here is a little phial — if she take
Mixed in her drink three drops, ‘twill steep
Her nature in a deep and soothing sleep.
MARGARET
What do I not for thy dear sake!
To her it will not harmful prove?
FAUST
Should I advise it else, sweet love?
MARGARET
I know not, dearest, when thy face I see,
What doth my spirit to thy will constrain;
Already I have done so much for thee,
That scarcely more to do doth now remain. [Exit.]
(MEPHISTOPHELES enters)
MEPHISTOPHELES
The monkey! Is she gone?
FAUST
Again hast played the spy?
MEPHISTOPHELES
Of all that pass’d I’m well apprized,
I heard the doctor catechized,
And trust he’ll profit much thereby!
Fain would the girls inquire indeed
Touching their lover’s faith and creed,
And whether pious in the good old way;
They think, if pliant there, us too he will obey.
FAUST
Thou monster, dost not see that this
Pure soul, possessed by ardent love,
Full of the living faith,
To her of bliss
The only pledge, must holy anguish prove,
Holding the man she loves fore-doomed to endless death!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Most sensual, supersensualist! The while
A damsel leads thee by the nose!
FAUST
Of filth and fire abortion vile!
MEPHISTOPHELES
In physiognomy strange skill she shows;
She in my presence feels she knows not how;
My mask it seems a hidden sense reveals;
That I’m a genius she must needs allow,
That I’m the very devil perhaps she feels.
So then tonight —
FAUST
What’s that to you?
MEPHISTOPHELES
I’ve my amusement in it too!
AT THE WELL
MARGARET and BESSY, with pitchers
BESSY
Of Barbara hast nothing heard?
MARGARET
I rarely go from home — no, not a word.
BESSY
’Tis true: Sybilla told me so today!
That comes of being proud, methinks;
She played the fool at last.
MARGARET
How so?
BESSY
They say
That two she feedeth when she eats and drinks.
MARGARET
Alas!
BESSY
She’s rightly served, in sooth.
How long she hung upon the youth!
What promenades, what jaunts there were
To dancing booth and village fair!
The first she everywhere must shine,
He always treating her to pastry and to wine.
Of her good looks she was so vain,
So shameless too, that to retain
His presents, she did not disdain;
Sweet words and kisses came anon —
And then the virgin flower was gone.
MARGARET
Poor thing!
BESSY
Forsooth dost pity her?
At night, when at our wheels we sat,
Abroad our mothers ne’er would let us stir.
Then with her lover she must chat,
Or on the bench, or in the dusky walk,
Thinking the hours too brief for their sweet talk;
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