Faust: A Tragedy
Is't not enough that by my spoken word,
Of all I am and shall be thou art lord?
The world drives on, wild wave engulfing wave,
And shall a line bind me, if I would be a knave?
Yet 'tis a whim deep-graven in the heart,
And from such fancies who would gladly part?
Happy within whose honest breast concealed
There lives a faith, nor time nor chance can shake;
Yet still a parchment, written, stamped, and sealed,
A spectre is before which all must quake.
Commit but once thy word to the goose-feather,
Then must thou yield the sway to wax and leather.
Say, devil--paper, parchment, stone, or brass?
With me this coin or that will pass;
Style, or chisel, or pen shall it be?
Thou hast thy choice of all the three.
Mephistopheles.
What need of such a hasty flare
Of words about so paltry an affair?
Paper or parchment, any scrap will do,
Then write in blood your signature thereto.
Faust.
If this be all, there needs but small delay,
Such trifles shall not stand long in my way.
Mephistopheles. [_while Faust is signing the paper_]
Blood is a juice of most peculiar virtue.
Faust.
Only no fear that I shall e'er demur to
The bond as signed; my whole heart swears
Even to the letter that the parchment bears.
Too high hath soared my blown ambition;
I now take rank with thy condition;
The Mighty Spirit of All hath scorned me,
And Nature from her secrets spurned me:
My thread of thought is rent in twain,
All science I loathe with its wranglings vain.
In the depths of sensual joy, let us tame
Our glowing passion's restless flame!
In magic veil, from unseen hand,
Be wonders ever at our command!
Plunge we into the rush of Time!
Into Action's rolling main!
Then let pleasure and pain,
Loss and gain,
Joy and sorrow, alternate chime!
Let bright suns shine, or dark clouds lower,
The man that works is master of the hour.
Mephistopheles.
To thee I set nor bound nor measure,
Every dainty thou may'st snatch,
Every flying joy may'st catch,
Drink deep, and drain each cup of pleasure;
Only have courage, friend, and be not shy!
Faust.
Content from thee thy proper wares to buy,
Thou markest well, I do not speak of joy,
Pleasure that smarts, giddy intoxication,
Enamoured hate, and stimulant vexation.
My bosom healed from hungry greed of science
With every human pang shall court alliance;
What all mankind of pain and of enjoyment
May taste, with them to taste be my employment;
Their deepest and their highest I will sound,
Want when they want, be filled when they abound,
My proper self unto their self extend,
And with them too be wrecked, and ruined in the end.
Mephistopheles.
Believe thou me, who speak from test severe,
Chewing the same hard food from year to year,
There lives (were but the naked truth confessed)
No man who, from his cradle to his bier,
The same sour leaven can digest!
Trust one of us--this universe so bright,
He made it only for his own delight;
Supreme He reigns, in endless glory shining,
To utter darkness me and mine consigning,
And grudges ev'n to you the day without the night.
Faust.
But I will!
Mephistopheles.
There you are right!
One thing alone gives me concern,
The time is short, and we have much to learn.
There is a way, if you would know it,
Just take into your pay a poet;
Then let the learned gentleman sweep
Through the wide realms of imagination
And every noble qualification,
Upon your honored crown upheap,
The strength of the lion,
The wild deer's agility,
The fire of the south,
With the north's durability.
Then let his invention the secret unfold,
To be crafty and cunning, yet generous and bold;
And teach your youthful blood, as poets can,
To fall in love according to a plan.
Myself have a shrewd notion where we might
Enlist a cunning craftsman of this nature,
And Mr. Microcosmus he is hight.
Faust.
What am I then, if still I strive in vain
To reach the crown of manhood's perfect stature,
The goal for which with all my life of life I strain?
Mephistopheles.
Thou art, do what thou wilt, just what thou art.
Heap wigs on wigs by millions on thy head,
And upon yard-high buskins tread,
Still thou remainest simply what thou art.
Faust.
I feel it well, in vain have I uphoarded
All treasures that the mind of man afforded,
And when I sit me down, I feel no more
A well of life within me than before;
Not ev'n one hairbreadth greater is my height,
Not one inch nearer to the infinite.
Mephistopheles.
My worthy friend, these things you view,
Just as they appear to you;
Some wiser method we must shape us,
Ere the joys of life escape us.
Why, what the devil! hands and feet,
Brain and brawn and blood are thine;
And what I drink, and what I eat,
Whose can it be, if 'tis not mine?
If I can number twice three horses,
Are not their muscles mine? and when I'm mounted,
I feel myself a man, and wheel my courses,
Just as if four-and-twenty legs I counted.
Quick then! have done with reverie,
And dash into the world with me!
I tell thee plain, a speculating fellow
Is like an ox on heath all brown and yellow,
Led in a circle by an evil spirit,
With roods of lush green pasture smiling near it.
Faust.
But how shall we commence?
Mephistopheles.
We start this minute:
Why, what a place of torture is here,
And what a life you live within it!
Yourself and your pack of younkers dear,
Killing outright with ennui!
Leave that to honest neighbor Paunch!
Thrashing of straw is not for thee:
Besides, into the best of all your knowledge,
You know 'tis not permitted you to launch
With chicken-hearted boys at College.
Ev'n now, methinks, I hear one on the stair.
Faust.
Send him away: I cannot bear--
Mephistopheles.
Poor boy! he's waited long, nor must depart
Without some friendly word for head and heart;
Come, let me slip into your gown; the mask
Will suit me well; as for the teaching task,
[_He puts on_ /Faust's/ _scholastic robes._]
Leave that to me! I only ask
A quarter of an hour; and you make speed
And have all ready for our journey's need. [_Exit._
Mephistopheles. [_solus_]
Continue thus to hold at nought
Man's highest power, his power of thought;
Thus let the Father of all lies
With shows of magic blind thine eyes,
And thou art mine, a certain prize.
To him hath Fate a spirit given,
With reinless impulse ever forwards driven,
Whose hasty striving overskips
The joys that flow for mortal lips;
Him drag I on through life's wild chase,
Through flat unmeaning emptiness;
He shall cling and cleave to me,
Like a sprawling child in agony,
And food and drink, illusive hovering nigh,
Shall shun his parchèd lips, and cheat his longing eye;
He shall pine and pant and strain
For the thing he may not gain,
And, though he ne'er had sold him to do evil,
He would have damned himself without help from the devil.
Scene VII.
_Enter a_ /Student/.
Student.
I am but fresh arrived to-day,
And come my best respects to pay,
To one whose name, from boor to Kaiser,
None, without veneration, mention.
Mephistopheles.
I feel obliged by your attention!
You see a man than other men no wiser:
Have you made inquiry elsewhere?
Student.
Beseech you, sir, be my adviser!
I come with money to spend and spare,
With fresh young blood, and a merry heart,
On my college career to start:
My mother sent me, not without a tear,
To get some needful schooling here.
Mephistopheles.
A better place you could not find.
Student.
To speak the truth, 'tis not much to my mind.
Within these narrow cloister walls,
These antiquated Gothic halls,
I feel myself but ill at ease;
No spot of green I see, no trees,
And 'mid your formal rows of benches,
I almost seem to lose my senses.
Mephistopheles.
That all depends on custom. Don't you see
How a young babe at first is slow
To know its mother's breast; but soon
With joy it strains the milky boon;
So you anon will suck nutrition
From Wisdom's breasts with blest fruition.
Student.
I yearn to do so even now;
But, in the first place, tell me how?
Mephistopheles.
My help is yours, or great or small;
But choose your Faculty, first of all.
Student.
I aim at culture, learning, all
That men call science on the ball
Of earth, or in the starry tent
Of heaven; all Nature high and low,
Broad and deep, I seek to know.
Mephistopheles.
There you are on the proper scent;
Only beware of too much distraction.
Student.
With soul and body I'm girt for action,
And yet I cannot choose but praise
A little freedom and merriment,
On pleasant summer holidays.
Mephistopheles.
Redeem the time, for fast it fleets away,
But order rules the hour it cannot stay.
Therefore 'tis plain that you must pass
First of all through the logic class.
There will your mind be postured rightly,
Laced up in Spanish buskins tightly,
That with caution and care, as wisdom ought,
It may creep along the path of thought,
And not with fitful flickering glow
Will o' the wisp it to and fro.
There, too, if you hear the gentleman through
The term, to every lecture true,
You'll learn that a stroke of human thinking,
Which you had practised once as free
And natural as eating and drinking,
Cannot be made without one! two! three!
True, it should seem that the tissue of thought
Is like a web by cunning master wrought,
Where one stroke moves a thousand threads,
The shuttle shoots backwards and forwards between,
The slender threads flow together unseen,
And one with the others thousand-fold weds:
Then steps the philosopher forth to show
How of necessity it must be so:
If the first be so, the second is so,
And therefore the third and the fourth is so;
And unless the first and the second before be,
The third and the fourth can never more be.
So schoolmen teach and scholars believe,
But none of them yet ever learned to weave.
He who strives to know a thing well
Must first the spirit within expel,
Then can he count the parts in his hand,
Only without the spiritual band.
_Encheiresis naturæ_, 'tis clept in Chemistry,
Thus laughing at herself, albeit she knows not why.
Student.
I must confess I can't quite comprehend you.
Mephistopheles.
In this respect time by and by will mend you,
When you have learned the crude mixed masses
To decompose, and rank them in their classes.
Student.
I feel as stupid to all he has said,
As a mill-wheel were whirling round in my head.
Mephistopheles.
After logic, first of all,
To the study of metaphysics fall!
There strive to know what ne'er was made
To go into a human head;
For what is within and without its command
A high-sounding word is always at hand.
But chiefly, for the first half year,
Let order in all your studies appear;
Five lectures a-day, that no time be lost,
And with the clock be at your post!
Come not, as some, without preparation,
But con his paragraphs o'er and o'er,
To be able to say, when you hear his oration,
That he gives you his book, and nothing more;
Yet not the less take down his words in writing,
As if the Holy Spirit were inditing!
Student.