THE THREE. Thy aspect gives strength to the angels, though none can fathom thee, and all thy sublime works are glorious as on the first day. MEPHISTOPHEles. Since, Lord, you approach once again, and inquire how things are going on with us, and on other occasions were not displeased to see me therefore is it that you see me also amongst your suite. Excuse me, I cannot talk fine, not though the whole circle should cry scorn on me. My pathos would certainly make you laugh, had you not left off laughing. I have nothing to say about suns and worlds; I only mark how men are plaguing themselves. The little god of the world continues ever of the same stamp, and is as odd as on the first day. He would lead a somewhat better life of it, had you not given him a glimmering of heaven's light. He calls it reason, and uses it only to be the most brutal of brutes. He seems to me, with your Grace's leave, like one of the long-legged grasshoppers, which is ever flying, and bounding as it flies, and then sings its old song in the grass; - and would that he did but lie always in the grass! He thrusts his nose into every puddle. THE LORD. Have you nothing else to say to me? Are you always coming to me for no other purpose than to complain? Is nothing ever to your liking upon earth? MEPHISTOPHELES. No, Lord! I find things there, as ever, miserably bad. Men, in their days of wretchedness, move my pity; even I myself have not the heart to torment the poor things. THE LORD. Do you know Faust? MEPHISTOPHELES. The Doctor? THE LORD. My servant! MEPHISTOPHELES. Verily he serves you after a fashion of his own. The fool's meat and drink are not of earth. The ferment of his spirit impels him towards the far away. He himself is half conscious of his madness. Of heaven he demands its brightest stars; and of earth-its every highest enjoyment; and all the near, and all the far, content not his deeply-agitated breast. THE LORD. Although he does but serve me in perplexity now, I shall soon lead him into light. When the tree buds, the gardener knows that blossom and fruit will deck the coming years. MEPHISTOPHELES. What will you wager? you shall lose him yet, if you give me leave to guide him quietly my own way. THE LORD. So long as he lives upon the earth, so long be it not forbidden to thee. Man is liable to error, whilst his struggle lasts. MEPHISTOPHELES. I am much obliged to you for that; for I have never had any fancy for the dead. I like plump, fresh cheeks the best. I am not at home to a corpse. I am like the cat with the mouse. THE LORD. Enough, it is permitted thee. Divert this spirit from his original source, and bear him, if thou canst seize him, down on thy own path with thee. And stand abashed, when thou art compelled to own-a good man, in his dark strivings, may still be conscious of the right way.13 MEPHISTOPHEles. Well, well, only it will not last long. I am not at all in pain for my wager. Should I succeed, excuse my triumphing with my whole soul. Dust shall he eat, and with a relish, like my cousin, the renowned snake. THE LORD. There also you are free to act as you like. I have never hated the like of you. Of all the spirits that deny, the scoffer is the least offensive to me. 14 Man's activity is all too prone to slumber: he soon gets fond of unconditional repose; I am therefore glad to give him a companion, who stirs and works, and must, as devil, be doing. But ye, the true children of heaven, rejoice in the living profusion of beauty. The creative essence,15 which works and lives through all time, embrace you within the happy bounds of love; and what hovers in changeful seeming, do ye fix firm with everlasting thoughts. (Heaven closes, the Archangels disperse.) MEPHISTOPHELES alone. I like to see the Ancient One occasionally, 16 and take care not to break with him. It is really civil in so great a Lord, to speak so kindly with the Devil himself. FAUST. NIGHT. FAUST in a high-vaulted, narrow, Gothic chamber, seated restless at his desk.1 FAUST. - HAVE now, alas! by zealous exertion, thoroughly mastered philosophy, the jurist's craft, and medicine, and, to my sorrow, theology too. Here I stand, poor fool that I am, just as wise as before. I am called Master, ay, and Doctor, and have now for nearly ten years been leading my pupils about up and down, cross ways and crooked ways by the nose; and see that we can know nothing! This it is that almost burns up the heart within me.18 True, I am cleverer than all the solemn triflers- doctors, masters, writers, and priests. No doubts nor scruples of any sort trouble me; I fear neither hell nor the devil. For this very reason is all joy torn from me. 19 I no longer fancy I know anything worth knowing; I no longer fancy I could teach anything to better and convert mankind. Then I have neither land nor money, nor honor and rank in the world. No dog would like to live so any longer. I have therefore devoted myself to magic-20 whether, through the power and voice of the Spirit, many a mystery might not become known to me; that I may no longer, with bitter sweat, be obliged to speak of what I do not know; that I may learn what it is that holds the world together in its inmost core, see all the springs and seeds of production, and drive no longer a paltry traffic in words. Oh! would that thou, radiant moonlight, wert looking for the last time upon my misery; thou, for whom I have sat watching so many a midnight at this desk; then, over books and papers, melancholy friend, didst thou appear to me! — Oh! that I might wander on the mountain-tops in thy loved light-hover with spirits around the mountain caves — - flit over the fields in thy glimmer, and, disencumbered from all the fumes of knowledge, bathe myself sound in thy dew! Woe is me! am I still penned up in this dungeon?— accursed, musty, walled hole!—where even the precious light of heaven breaks mournfully through painted panes, stinted by this heap of books, which worms eat — dust begrimes - which, up to the very top of the vault, a smoke-smeared - paper encompasses; with glasses and boxes ranged round, with instruments piled up on all sides, ancestral lumber stuffed in with the rest! This is thy world, and a precious world it is! And dost thou still ask, why thy heart flutters so confinedly in thy bosom? Why a vague aching deadens within thee every stirring principle of life?-Instead of the animated nature, for which God made man, thou hast nought around thee but beasts' skeletons and dead men's bones, in smoke and mould. Up! away! out into the wide world! And this mysterious book, from Nostradamus' 21 own hand, is it not guide enough for thee? Thou then knowest the course of the stars, and, when nature instructs thee, the soul's essence then rises up to thee, as one spirit speaks to |