ft CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Mn sfl i DATE DUE Cornell University Library PT 2026.F2A62 1864 Faustus. 3 1924 026 189 617 4H ^ ^ ? -^ \ ■» ANSTER'S FAUST, PART Sy the same Ftamlator, just read/y, FAtrSTTJS, Past I. from the German of Goethe. New Edition, uniform with the present volume. *** The First Part of AnStbe's TavM, originally pub- lished in 1835, has been twice reprinted in Germany, but has been many years out of print in England. F A U S T U S: THE SECOND PART. FROM THE GERMAN OF GOETHE. JOHN ANSTER, LL.D., M.R.I.A. KEGIUS rKOFESSOR OP CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVKESITT OF DUBLIN, LONDON: LONGMAN, GKEEN, LONGMAN, KOBERTS, & GREEN. 1864. TO HIS EXCEIXENCY GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK EARL OF CARLISLE, K.G. Tbinitt College, Dublin: Apnl 30, 1864. Mt Lor», I am anxious to inscribe with your Excellency's name this attempt to reproduce in another language Goethe's re- markable poem of the Second Part of Faust ; partly as it gives me the opportunity of publicly expressing my feeling of gratitude for important obligations conferred by your Lord- ship ; partly because in your Excellency's government of a land in which discords, surviving from remote times, still tend to distract and disunite lis, I see with delight the admiration ^may I not say the affection ? — with which men of every party and of every shade of opinion regard you, and in this I seem to myself to see evidence that my countrymen, amidst the differences which must exist in a free people, may — in aU that is best in our nature, in the convictions of the under- standing, in the affections of the heart — yet be, nay, even now are, one. And I can scarcely forbear adding, that you thus not alone represent but symbolise Her whom all look up to and venerate and love. This unity of feeling makes me con- fidently anticipate happiness for the Future of my country. But a motive seemingly lighter, yet which in the dedica- tion of this poem it is perhaps more natural to express, and which perhaps influences me more, is one which I will venture to state. You, my Lord, have done much to recall us to the study of our great poets. By public lectures in England you VUl DEDICATION. have illustrated the works of Pope and of Gray, and in Ireland, through your suggestion and your aid, the statue of Gold- smith is one of the ornaments of our Capital. The works uf Pope and of Gray were among the habitual studies of ' the illustrious Goethe, who ' — the language is Byron's, and not more than adequate — ' has created the literature of his own country, and illustrated that of Europe.' One of ^ Goethe's first literary engagements was a translation of the ' Deserted Village ;' and his prose style was formed, as far as it can be said to have been formed on any previous model, on that of the 'Vicar of "Wakefield.' I am by the nature of my task led to associate what you have done for literature with the image of Goethe as it exists in my thoughts ; and I cannot easily express the gratification I feel at your receiving this volume, and my having your permission to add that TO THE EAEL OF CARLISLE THIS VOLUME IS EESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY HIS EXCELLENCY'S OBLIGED HUMBLE SERVANT JOHN ANSTER. CONTENTS. TiiANSLATon's Pkeface i — xvii SCENES AND PERSONS OF THE DRAMA. Act I, Swiss Landscape ; Ariel ...... 1 Pauses of the Night ; Song of Fairies . . . .2 Sunrise ; Ariel ; Faustus ...... 4 Imperial Palace; Mephistopheles as Court Fool . . 7 Council of State ; Want of Money ; MephistO' pheles' Expedient .... Carnival Masque ...... Characters in Masque as arranged by the Herald Garden Girls, &c., Mother and Daughter Wood-cutters, Pulchinelloes, Parasites, &e. Poets, Greek Mythology, Graces, Fates, Furies A Group, in which a winged Victoey is seen borne on an Elephant, the movements of which Prudence governs. Hope and Fear chained ....... Characters in Masque, introduced by Faustus and Mephistopheles 44 — 47 Zoilo-Thersites, acted by Mephistopheles . 44 — 45 Knabe-Lenker, „ Euphorion Plutus, „ Faustus Starveling, „ Mephistopheles >- 48 — 71 Pan, „ The Emperor Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs, &c. • . 8—23 24—71 24—41 25—31 32—36 36—41 41 — 44 CONTENTS. Pleasure-garden. Success of Mephistopheles' Ex- pedient ...... Paper Money : described by Mephistopheles „ „ by Faustus „ „ by the Emperor Faustus and Mephistopheles Bankers ; given Places in the Treasury .... Scene between Mephistopheles and the oflScial Court Fool ; Court Fool's Prudence The Mothers ....... Mephistopheles as Quack- Doctor Exhibition of Paris and Helena PAGE 72 78—79 79 81 80 82 84 — 92 93—97 98—110 Act II. Mephistopheles in Faustus's College Chamber. Chorus of Insects, &c. . Mephistopheles and Famulus Mephistopheles and Baccalaureus Mephistopheles, Wagner, Homunculus Classical WALPuaois Night Erichtho GriiBns, Sphinxes, Sirens, &c Faustus and River Nymphs Faustus and Cheiron . Seismos, Pygmies, Cranes . Mephistopheles. and Xjamise Homunculus, Thales, Anaxagoras Mephistopheles and the P)iorcyads Sirens ; Nereids and Tritons ; the Cabiri The .SIgeaij Sea; Thales, Homunculus, Nereus ..... Homunculus, Thales, Proteus Telchines of Rhodes . Doves of Paphgs, P^elli and Marsi 111—113 114—117 118—125 126—136 137—226 137—139 142-152 153—156 156—166 168—176 177—184 1 86 — ] 92 193—198 199—210 202—206 210—226 214—215 218-220 CONTENTS. XI PAOE Dorides, their human Lovers, and Nereus . 221 — 22S Galatea 223 Thales, Homunculus, Sirens . . . 224 — 226 Act III. Sparta ; Palace of Menelaus ; Helena ; Chorus . 227 — 238 Fhorcyas, Helena, Chorus .... 238 — 264 Faustus's Castle. Faustus, Helena, Lynceus . 2b'5 — 276 Faustus, Helena, Chorus 276 — 280 Menelaus's Approach announced ; Faustus's Pre- paration for Defence. The feudal System. Description of Greece .... 281 — 287 Arcadia, Euphorion described by Fhorcyas . 288 — 29.S Chorus relates the Birth of Hermes . . . 293 — 294 Euphorion, Helena, Faustus .... 296—306 Death of Euphorion. Dirge .... 306 — 307 Helena vanishes, leaving behind her Robe and Veil, which resolve themselves into Clouds . 308 — 309 Chorus become elementary Spirits . . . 311 — 315 Act IV. Faustus, who has flown through the air sup- ported on the clouds into which Helena's robes have been changed, is landed on a high mountain, and describes the shapes which the clouds, on which he - has tra- velled, assume as they roll eastward . . 316 — 318 Mephistopheles appears. Geological Discussion 318 — 321 Mephistopheles's guesses as to what was calculated to give most pleasure to Faustus . . 321 — 324 Faustus's Objects 324 — 325 The Emperor's DiiHcuIties. Rebellion. An anti- Ceesar proclaimed 327 — 329 Xll CONTENTS. Faustus and Mephistopheles come to the Em- peror's aid and win a decisive Battle for him by magic 339— SS8 Scene after the Victory. Golden Bull . . 363—378 Faustus given the Sea-shore as a Feoff, charged with Tithes, &c., for the Church . . 377 Act V. Baucis and Philemon. Wanderer . . . 379 — 383 Mephistopheles and his ' Three ; ' Piracy . . 384 — 386 Colonisation. Projected displacement of Baucis and Philemon ; their fate . . . 389—395 Strange Apparitions. Cake. Repelled by Faustus 396 — 404 Mephistopheles and Lemurs .... 405 — 406 Faustus's last Words ; his Death . . . 408 — 409 Mephistopheles and his Devils. Hell-mouth ex- hibited 410 — 413 Apparition of Angels. Contest with Mephisto- pheles 413 — 420 Angels' Song of Triumph. Mephistopheles's final Soliloquy 422 424 Mountain Scenery. Cells of Anchorets at dif- ferent heights ..... 425 — 430 Pater Ecstaticus. Pater Profundus. Pater Sera- phicus. Blessed Boys, Angels, Doctor Marianus , 425 437 Matek Gloriosa ...... 434 437 Female Penitents. Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana. Maria ^gyptiaca , . 434—435 Una Penitentium, formerly named Gretehen, and Margaret 436 — 437 Chorus Mysticus ...... 437^433 As the dates of the composition, and even those of the publication, of the several parts of Faust II. give some aid in interpreting the poem, I think it belter to state them. The Third Act — the Helena — was the part first published. It had for a long time floated beflsre the poet's mind, and is mentioned in his correspondence with Schiller in the year 1800. It was sent to the press January 29, 1827. In 1828 the first scenes of the First Act, including the Masque, appeared. Goethe, in a letter to W. von Humboldt, said that the Masque would throw light on some passages of the Helena. Nothing more of the Second Part was published during Goethe's life. In 1827, parts of the Fourth Act were written ; the close of the Fifth Act had been long before completed. On July 27, 1 828, be says, in a letter to Zelter, that he feels he has suc- ceeded in the commencement of the Second Act, but that the First is still unfinished. At the close of 1829 the two first acts were still incomplete. On December 6, 1829, Goethe read to Eckermann the first scene 'of the Second Act ; on the 16tb, the scene between Mephistopheles and Wagner, when Homunculus first appears ; on December 27, the paper- money scene of the First Act; and on the 30th, the scene of the Exhibition of Paris and Helena ; and a few days after the opening of the Classical Walpdrgis Night. The first half of the Classical Walpurgis Night was written in the February of that year. Some interruption occurred, but towards the close of the year Goethe was able to report that the three first acts and the fifth were finished. This was not quite accurate, as the first scenes of the Fifth Act, which he said had been before his mind for thirty years, were not yet written down. In April 1831, this part was first com- mitted to paper. In August 1831, a few days before his last birthday, he completed the Fourth Act, and sealed the en- tire, which was published by Riemer in the following year, as the first volume of his posthumous works. PREFACE. It is impossible to introduce a poem so peculiar as the Second Part of 'Faust ' without saying a few- words in the way of preface. The editor or translator of one of the old Greek dramas, where the story is known, and where the characters are few, finds it necessary to prefix to his work some- thing of argument, and the present is surely a case in which the same privilege will be conceded. In the poem called the First Part of 'Faust,' there can scarcely be said to be Allegory. The dramatis personae are Individuals, never thought of by the spectator or reader as other than Indivi- duals. In the Second, the figures brought upon the stage cannot be so described. What we meet here is not so much Personality as an artistic mask of Personality, and the language of the dialogue is not always intelligible, till you remember that the masked figure, in which the eye looks upon what would seem a single individual, embodies some aggregate of notions, perhaps for the first XVI PREFACE. time combined by the poet. Court-life, war, one stage of civilisation or another, are shown or hidden under these masks. In the First Part of ' Faust,' the Individual is everythinsr. In the Second, the individual, even when more than a mere repre- sentative mask, has less of personal existence than in the earlier poem. He is but a part of Society, by which everything which he is made say and do is conditioned. Faustus is in the second drama what Mephistopheles has called himself in the first, 'part of a part.' In the First Part, Emperors and Field-marshals, Chancellors and Masters of the Treasury, were not so much as thought of : the war, which we were called on to witness, was that which for ever exists, which all — perhaps all — understand and feel and live, and which there- fore commands the instant sympathies of all : the war was ia Faustus's own mind — within his own mind ; — represented to the outward eye as a struggle with demoniac power. Faustus is shown in the Second as seeking to reconcile him- self with the world in which he lives. In the First Part, what is said by him is said with no reference to anything but its own absolute truth, or to Man's aspiring, passionate, tempestuous nature. In the Second, all is relative to Society, or some condition of it. From what I have said, my readers will see that I speak of a poem, which, PREFACE. XVH like the allegories of Spenser, to understand fully requires the fixed attention of the mind ; but, even ■when you wholly forget all but the scenes as pre- sented to the eye, it has the interest of a Romance. The stage directions in the second part of ' Faust ' ■were written not by Goethe, but by his editors, and this alone would make it requisite to give some abstract of the story. How desirable such aid is — nay, how necessary, cannot be more strik- ingly proved, than by Hans Andersen's account of the drama, in his ' To be or not to be.' He mis- conceives every incident. Even the critiques on tljis poem by Gervinus and Julian Schmidt, in their Histories of German Literature, are not free from many mistakes of detail. The story of the First Part may be assumed as known. The demon, who had undertaken to accom- pany Faustus ks a sort of travelling tutor, was to show him high life — the great world, as well as the humble life through which we saw them moving in the First. ' The star-bright meteors of Ambi- tion's heaven ' were among the objects mentioned in the conversation which ended in their contract, and Mephistopheles now proceeds to fulfil this part of his engagement. But he finds Faustus in some respects an altered man. The Second Part opens with a scene strongly contrasted with that which commences the first drama. We see Faustus XV 111 PEEFACB. ' lying on a flowery grass plot, weary, striving to sleep.' It is a Swiss landscape. The time, even- ing twilight ; and we have hovering round him Ariel and a group of Fairies, who sing him to sleep, and while he ' sleeps, continue to sing, strengthening and consoling him, and preparing him for a future of hope. The songs themselves are supposed to be accompanied by the effects which they describe, and he awakes at sunrise — alone — for the Fairies have disappeared, and his spiritual adviser is not present. The scenery around him, and the sight of all nature awakening to new life, and clothing itself with beauty, recall him to his better self. The past is forgotten, or but little adverted to, and he looks forward to the future in the spirit of hope and earnest endeavour. The next scene is one in which Faustus does not appear, but in which his companion plays a principal part. It is the Imperial Court, and a Council of State is being held. The Kaiser ascends the throne. He is more than usually ' inops ,con- silii,' for his chief adviser, the Court Fool, is absent — drunk probably, but whether ' dead or drunk, who knows or cares ? ' The Astrologer, how- ever, is there, to tell how things go on among the planets ; ,and the Kaiser — an indolent young man — is a prince who prefers listening to his Fool's lessons of native wisdom, and his Astrologer's scientific inferences from the aspect of the heavens, PREFACE. XIX to hearing the less pleasant communications of the OfiBcers of State. Before the Council has formally opened, Mephistopheles makes good his claim to the vacant place of Fool, and before it closes, delights the Kaiser with the prospect of relieving the State from the embarrassment which a want of money has created in every department of the public service. Mephistopheles is ready with an expe- dient, which he announces, as if from it was to spring a new dawn of prosperity to the Empire. The Astrologer, with whom he contrives to be in concert, says the stars are favourable. The officers of State, who, it has been suggested, are the same effete old gentlemen whom Faustus had met on the Brocken and heard complaining that the world was not disposed to acknowledge their, services,* listen attentively. The Chancellor — he is the Archbishop — thinks the language of Mephisto- pheles, who speaks of ' Nature ' and ' Spirit,' is at least suspicious. He will have nothing to do with either, and Mephistopheles, though he aS' sumes a defying air, takes somewhat lower ground than at first, and condescends to ex- plain that the Empire has been at all times the ' Ex-Minister — Give me hack the good old days, When kings and courts obeyed our call, And ourselves were all in all. Faustus, 1st Pjjjt. Walpurgis Night. a2 XX PEEFACE. theatre of political convulsions, that a good deal of coined and of uncoined gold has from time to time been hidden underground, that such trea- sure is the Emperor's, and that there is a scientific man who can procure it for him — however, the matter had better be postponed till after the Carnival. The Emperor wishes to escape further explanation, and the carnival masque is held. The carnival scene is a gay one. It is more than a ball-room festival. The whole population of city and country are here — all, actors — all, spectators. It is not the- Eoman Carnival as de- scribed in one of Goethe's early works, where a people, habitually grave, throw ofi" their natural character for a season. It is more like Naples as Whiteside saw it in 1846 and 1847, and as Goethe had seen it half a century before ; where the very business of life is carried on in one eternal masquerade — where 'man, woman and child rush into the streets in the morning, and continue there, shouting and grinning, and dancing till night.' * In this perpetual revelry they exercise their ordinary occupations, and so with our masqueraders. We have every one exhi- biting, and acting, and over-acting, his own proper part in life. The Emperor enacts the ruling power. * Whiteside's ' Italy,' vol. iii. p. 21. PEEPACEi XXI He is Pan, and his courtiers are Pan's attend- ants. Mephistopheles, in more than one mask, is knave, and blackguard, and buffoon. The masque opens with an exhibition of the usual groups of such pageants. Flower-girls, woodcutters, pulchi- nelloes, and parasites, successively appear ; then comes, the Greek mythology — Fates, Furies, &c., the ancient and modern brought together in strange contrasts. We soon find ourselves among groups of a far diflferent character. A group, in which the herald sees a symbol of the ' State ' — Brute Force, rendered obedient to Eeason and Understanding — approaches; but the herald is not the only commentator. A deformed dwarf makes his appearance, and would interrupt him by some criticisms on this part of the exhibition. His own obliquity accompanies him everywhere, and so everything is to him wrong. The herald strikes' him with his staff, and the lumpy crea- ture breaks in two with the blow — And a twin birth, behold! a double wonder!^ Adder and Bat.* The herald begins to suspect magic, and our court-fool is, perhaps, here enacting a part for which he would seem well fitted. That magic has mixed with the amusements, * Infra, p. 46. XXll PREFACE. there can be little doubt. Mephistopheles has not forgotten his scheme for supplying the Em- peror with money, and the show now exhibits Plutus, the God of Wealth, coming on a visit to the Emperor. His charioteer is a boy, scarcely more than a boy in appearance, yet a boy already endangering every female heart Is he Love ? Plutus calls him his soh. Has Plato's account of the parentage of Love passed before Goethe's mind, and are we to look for his other parent in the meagre figure to which our attention is next directed? On the roof of the carriage is a strange starved creature — a figure no doubt masked as a male, but who tells you of a time when women called it Avaritia — perhaps the Penia of Plato. The women detested her then, and now she is not better liked. Male or female, the love of money is the strong ruling principle — more when in the service of the God of Kiches than when in a state of almost absolute indigence. This mask, we are told, is intended as a contrast and foil to the splendour of Plutus, and the extravagance of his young attendant. Something more than this is meant, and we suspect that we may almost give it a name borrowed from Modern Science and that we see here if not Political Economy, yet the Principle of Abstinence, on which Political Economy ultimately rests. PREFACE. XXUl The boy, Plutus's Charioteer, tells us that he is Profusion — that he is Poetry, that he is never truly himself but when he is expending all he has. He scatters gifts among the crowd. They snatch at them eagerly; but they are not ma- terial wealth, and they are unvalued. Neither are they his highest gifts. A conversation takes place between him and Plutus, in which each compli- ments the other. The boy retires, Plutus saying to him, — Thou art free ; Away to thine own sphere — away with thee. ****** There, where the clear eye sees in calm the clear ; There, where the good, the beautiful is dear ; Where the pure impulse of the heart alone Doth guide thee, and thou art indeed thine own. In Solitude : oh ! there create thy world.* Plutus — in this mask Faustus appears — now exhibits his treasures. Cupidity is created every- where. Another and another group appears, and the stage becomes more and more crowded, for we have no reason to think that the masks, who have been introduced, leave the place — with the exception of the lovely boy who has per- sonated Poetry. Plutus, who now assumes the direction of the • Infra, p. 57. XXIV PREFACE. masque, announces the approach of a company whose cries and shouts threaten to overthrow everything. There is some secret connected with their coming. — a something known to Plutus — known also, it would seem, to the group who are approaching, or, perhaps, but to some of them. The group consists of the attendants of Pan — Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs. Among them are spirits of a gentler class — the Gnomes. The secret which cannot be long concealed is that the Emperor, who now appears, is Pan. The Gnomes lead him to the treasure-chest of Plutus. What can it be that there fixes his attention? The poet will in due time, and in his own way, communicate this.* Meanwhile, as the Emperor bends over the chest, his mask falls off, and catches fire. The blaze extends ; he and his attendants appear to be in great danger. The danger, however, is unreal, or different from what it appears to be. While engaged in looking into the chest, a paper has been put into his hand to sign. He signs it not observing, or in his terror forgetting, what he has done. The chief purpose of the masque has been effected when the signature has been obtained; and the fire, the work of magic, is by mao-ic ex- tinguished. From the moment of the appearance of Plutus and his charioteer, everything in the * Infra, 1st Act, p. "2; 4th Act, pp. 338-9. PREFACE. XXV masque was done for the purpose of exciting the imagination, and creating confidence in the power of the adventurers to fulfil their promises. For this, Poetry with its extravagant promises is called into play. It is Poetry degraded by being out of its proper sphere — in the language of Schiller, of ' slaves the slave ' — still not the less, perhaps even the more, working on the sensuous imagination. When the Spirit that has sustained this part disappears, material wealth is shown bubbling and boiling up in the chest or cauldron of Plutus. Economy is represented as Penury and Indigence, united with such mean self-indulgence as excludes all higher principle. The confidence which Mephistopheles had sought to create is effected. The paper placed in tlie Emperor's hand for his signature is a form of assignat pledging the State to the repayment of a sum of money charge- able on the treasures underground, the custody of which is given to Faustus and Mephistopheles. The plan is Mephistopheles's. He has proposed it. On him is thrown the task of showing its advan- tages, and Faustus is, perhaps intentionally, but little engaged in the conversations on the subject. The assignats are multiplied indefinitely. You did but write ; No time was lost — a thousand artists plied, A thousand-fold the scroll was multiplied.* * Infra, p. 77. XXVI PREFACE. Our readers may remember that some of the old legends identify Faust the magician with Fust the printer, and make the magician pay his way with what seems to be money, but turns out to be withered leaves. Has Goethe intended to unite in his paper-money scene both stories ? However this be, the old story-book and the puppet-play of the Devil and Doctor Faustus sup- plied him with the phantom of Helena — a phantom which he tells Zelter in one of his letters had flitted before him for fifty years: Your mythologic lady has no age,* and she became no older in all that time than she had been three thousand years before. The Emperor, made rich — as France was made rich by Law's Scheme, as England was made rich by the South-Sea Bubble — would patronise the Fine Arts, perhaps has some curiosity himself; and we have a command-night for the exhibition of Paris and Helena. He would see, as they appeared in life, the models of male and female beauty; the actual Helen, the original of so many paintings, and statues, and poems. Faustus, who from his success in the masque, seems, in addition to his duties in the Treasury, to have been a * Infra, p. 163. PREFACE. XXVII sort of theatrical manager,* sees no great diflS- culty in the matter with such an assistant as he had in Mephistopheles. However, he finds his mistake. His agent, dexterous as he has proved himself in his banking manipulations, knows little of the Fine Arts.f Helen is not now on earth. Where she is he cannot ap- proach. She dwells in a region accessible but to Man. This is expressed by Mephistopheles in language not very complimentary to her, nor very respectful to Faustus. In short, the agent can do nothing himself in the business — little or nothing — and if it is at all to be accomplished, Faustus must gird himself for the work. He must visit the realm of the ' Mothers,' and will there obtain the means by which to exhibit the phantoms he wants. Whatever has at any time existed on earth existed in more than phenomenal appearance, and does not perish. In Schiller's ' Ideal and Life ' * It would appear that in his plans for ' Faust,' Goethe had intended that Faustus should exhibit before the Emperor other interludes as well as that of Paris and Helena. One was ' Fortinbras, King of Denmark,' Hamlet's successor. — Paraltpomena to Faust. f His agent, whatever his powers of mere reasoning are, can know nothing of the Beautiful. Science is for all higher intelligences — Mephistopheles among the rest. Art, Art, Man, is thine alone ! The Artists.— JHfenua/e'* Schiller, p. 25. XXVlll PKEPACB. we have something of the same line of thought without the mocking tone of Mephistopheles : — BoDT alone is slave of the dark Powers That weave this life of ours. Playmate of happy Natures — 'mong the gods. Godlike— o'er floors of light, their blest abodes, Above the world of Time floats airy Shape. And wouldst thou on her free wing hovering play, Wouldst thou too from the grasp of Time escape ? Oh ! rise from dreary earth's anxiety, Breathe the calm heaven of that diviner day ! To the Ideai, flee! Semblances, of all that has ever been, float round the heads of the 'Mothers' — Goddesses, acknow- ledged as such by Mephistopheles, though he has little thought of proposing them as objects of worship, who dwell in some region to which the name of Place cannot be given, and which has no relation to measured Time. Place none around them, glimpse of Time still less » * * # » A burning Tripod tells thee thou hast found The deepest art below the deepest ground ; And by its light the Mothbks thou wilt see.* The Beautiful is only for Man, but ' our minister and interpreter of Nature ' is not without some power. Faustus is to do what never yet has been accomplished — is The first to venture on such bold design.f * Infra, p. 86-91. t P. 92. PREFACE. XXIX It would be madness to expect that ' things never yet accomplished could be effected except by means hitherto untried,' but Mepliistopheles has means of 'assisting the mechanic, the mathematician, the physicist, the alchemist, and the magician;' and with a solemnity not unlike that of Lord Bacon, ad- dressing King James, he places in Faustus's hand a magnetic Ket, a sort of 'Novum Organum,' which will aid him in the discovery of the Mothers, and will help him to bring up a burning tripod, which is beyond Mephistopheles's reach, but which, could it be once brought up to the surface, would place it in the power of a skilful magician to produce the required phantoms. A Key is said in some of the comments on the Orphic fragments to be a symbol of guardian power, and something of this kind is intimated in. the conversation.* It was also a symbol of the magician's having risen to the higher and priestly office; and Faustus, when he is seen after his descent or ascent to the Mothers — for either word would equally designate his expe- ditionl — is described as attired in priestly robe. If we are to go beyond the picture, and look for the hidden meaning, it would seem intended to express the effort by some process of Abstraction to attain to the Beautiful. Every conception that * Mepliistopheles to Faustus, Infra, p. 91. t Infra, p. 90. XXX PEEFACB. Faustus had before formed is to be got rid of; every combination of thoughts connected with imoderu life — nay, every association whatever, no matter with what connected. The proposed jour- ney indicates a mental process — The intellectual power Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way. Do what we may, habitual combinations of thought will present themselves. These must, as they ap- pear, be dissolved and disaffirmed by successive acts of negation. Everything external to the mind is to be excluded from thought — Fly far From earth — from all existences that are, Into the realms of Image uncon fined. * * * * * Like cloud-wreaths rising, rolling, the combined Army of Apparitions rush on thee. Wave high the Key, and keep them at far length, From thy person keep them.* Our wanderer — must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep Not chaos, not The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, Nor ought of blinder vacancy, scooped out By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe. As falls upon us, when we ... , look Into our Minds — into the Mind of man. * Infra, p. 90, PREFACE. XXXI and the Mind of Man is the mysterious land in which Faustus has now to travel ; and this fear and awe fall upon him when he feels the breath of that world within us of which we mortals know little or nothing, and of which spirits like Mephistopheles have little desire to speak. Other feelings soon aifect Faustus : he is humbled when he feels that his journey is taken for the object of a mere stage exhibition, and that he is lowering his human faculties by employing them thus in Mephistopheles's work. Higher purposes, however, soon animate him. He is now an artist and a poet, and in this sense, at least, a magician. In the depths of the Mind are the principles to which he must resort. He passes from all that exists to a region where he will find the shadows of all that had ever existed to him, however or whencesoever derived — not to Plato's World of pre-existent forms, but to some- thing more like Locke's ' storehouse of ideas.' The artistic creator builds his world — such is Mephistopheles's theory — out of combinations of floating phantoms, originally derived from sense, or through sensuous experience. This is exhibited in allegory by the key, his neophyte's guide and protector in this perilous journey. To pass, by some process of abstraction, beyond the realms of sensuous experience, to the land of deeper prin- XXXll PEEFACE. ciples, has been at all times a desire and a puzzle to Mephistopheles's cousins-german. They are still at it, lecturers and listeners — but it were dangerous to linger in these schools of Magic. The key of abstraction or negation will dissolve, decompose, and disperse every cloudy spectre that it touches. This is its natural and rightful pro- perty ; but here something more is promised. It begins to possess a power more than its own ; it ' sparkles and shines and swells in the hand.' The tripod, too, which we at last meet, is something in its nature distinct from the phantoms that shrink and dissolve at the touch of the key, and kindred with the key, for the key will attach itself to it. The key — if negation — is not unfittingly presented by the mocking spirit of denial. The key ex- presses a faculty of the human mind, and is what Faustus already possesses. The tripod, which he is to convey from the temple of the ' Mothers,' . . . convey the wise it call, is also a property or power of the human mind. And to a distinct consciousness of this faculty Faustus is now awakened. The solitude in which the mind is left when every object of sensuous perception is removed — when every combination of previous thought is cleared off — when abstrac- tion has swept it clean^is to Mephistopheles ' the very horror of blank Nought-at-all.' To Faustus PREFACE. XXXlll that solitude, and the removal of all that inter- rupts by preoccupation the freedom of the mind, is the world in which the creative principles of the Artist are, if anywhere, found. In this, thy Nothing, I hope tp find All. The language of the whole dialogue is not unlike that in the commencement of the chapter in the ' Critic der Reinen Vernunft,' on the division of objects into phenomena and noumena, and is still more like that of Steffens in his account of Spinosa, of which we transcribe a few sentences in our Notes. Goethe makes Mephistopheles use the language of Mythology ; but it is nothing more than the language. The body of thought which he would represent in this dialect is, the poet says, his own. Unknown goddesses were worshipped in Sicily under the name of 'Mothers:' like the Furies, when spoken of, they were styled Eu- menides, or the Benevolent; but the mention of them was avoided, and inspired men and demons with a peculiar horror. Under the name of these goddesses, and the horror they inspired, Goetlie amused himself by adumbrating the aesthetic phi- losophy of his country and its cloud-compelling teachers. In the temple of the Mothers the phantoms b XXXIT- PREFACE. floating round them in confused chaotic masses are those originating in perception. Perception furnishes the Matter, and, when they come to par- take of Form, in the Mind itself is the plastic and formative power. And this is the Tripod — this it is which gives form — gives form to anything sub- jected to it. Possessed of this, the magician makes the floating vapours into gods. If Goethe had, as I more than suspect, the thought of laughing at the Transcendeutalists, by stating their theories in a jargon formed of the dialects of alchemists, and mythologists, and hierophants, the joke was one that told, as there is not a school of philosophy in Germany that does not claim to be represented in it. The Kantian Categokies, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian Cave forlorn, are supposed to have sate for the Mothers them- selves ; and the Hegelian Tkilogie, in defiance of chronology, is held by Hegel's disciples to be sym- bolised or allegorised in the Tripod. We must leave this region, just saying that the key, like that in Bluebeard, is itself a Spirit. It knows the way, but is not quite to be depended on. It may play tricks, and we fear does. Any light which we have on this dark passage arises from the clash of contradictions — the truth flashing upon us from the collision not of absolute false, hoods, but of language expressing more than one PREFACE, XXXV body of thought. Crowding phantoms are not, it would seem, inconsistent with the entire solitude of the region. The adventure is, or seems to be, suc- cessful ; the tripod is stolen ; the phantoms ap- pear. Faustus is overpowered by the beauty of Helen, and, in a fit of jealousy with Paris, in some way violates the conditions by which Helen is rendered visible. She disappears, and he is re- moved in a state of paralysis. Is Helen, in whom Beauty is impersonated, somewhat more of a reality than Paris, who is said to represent Liberty — Liberty as exhibited by Mephistopheles, now a German nobleman and courtier, and at the bidding of a German Emperor ? Does it aid the suggested interpretation of the allegorical key that this unwelcome phantom, then dispersed, does not reappear ? Mephistopheles takes Faustus to his old college chamber — and scenes of modern University life in Germany are brought before us — Mephisto- pheles saying that their philosophy is as old as himself, and as original as sin. We come to something, if not more new, scarcely more fan- tastic. The Wagner of the poem has, by length of life, acquired something of reputation — he is now an alchemist, and busy with an original speculation. He would make a man by crystal- lisation. He is seen bending over the fire in b2 XXXVl PEEFACE. anxiety for the moment of projection, the stars are favourable, when Mephistopheles enters his laboratory ; and soon after we see a little man making his appearance in a phial of glass. Whether he owes to Wagner more than the glass with which he is encased, and how far Me- phistopheles is connected with his appearance, is not quite revealed, nor is it easy to reconcile even what is revealed as to this with the way in which we find our little friend occupied. The works of Paracelsus had supplied Goethe with the name, and had even given a receipt for thie in- struction of such students as Wagner for the fabrication of Homunculi — a receipt, however, dif- ferent from that which Wagner uses, and which seems in principle pretty much the same as that in the Georgics for the supply of bees. The men produced after Paracelsus's receipt are quite dif- ferent from those of human birth. It would appear that these Homunculi are occasionally met with in the ordinary duties of life. Their skill and their intelligence, and their felicity in discovering the secrets of Nature, are such, that it almost ap- proaches the knowledge, says Paracelsus, which is ascribed to Elementary Spirits. The little men are successful — sometimes even great poets, adroit actors, consummate critics. Their influence over men is more than commensurate with that PREFACE. XXXVii which they would seem entitled to, and this is ascribed to something in their original constitution defying all calculation, and to which the name of daimonic has been given. ' Among poets Moore, among orators Sheil would, perhaps, be thus classed; or, if we look to the creations of imagi- native writers for examples which, perhaps, it is scarce fair to take from real life, Scott's ' Black Dwarf,' Goethe's ' Mignon,' and the ' Small Wise Man,' in ' Oulita the Serf,' are likely to occur to us. Goethe's Homunculus is at the same time some- thing more and something less than man : — A lively spark, has every mental quality, But, luckless fellow, 't was his strange fatality. Without a shred of body, blood, or bone, Into the world to be at random thrown.* As to the proper Homunculi of Paracelsus, ' from Art,' says Paracelsus, ' from Art, not from Nature, have they received their life. Through Art they receive body, bone, flesh, birth. Art, then, is with them incorporate and inborn.' The word 'Art' is not without ambiguity, which Paracelsus's rea- soning does not altogether remove, for the Art of which he is speaking is Alchemy, and ' this,' he says in another part of his writings, 'is but a deeper view of Nature.' Though alchemists sup- * Infra, p. 212. XXXVlll PREFACE. plied part of Goethe's language in this passage, yet his Horaunculus is a creation of his own, and, if I understand it rightly, a daring one. Plato says that the Deity has placed in the human soul images or original conceptions of things as they exist ill the Soul of the World, of which man's soul is a part, but these images are darkened when im- prisoned in the body. The existence of Souls apart from Body, their pre-existence to any bodily investiture, their transmigrations through various bodies, and their final reunion with the Soul of the World, from which they had emanated, aredoctrines expressed in several of his dialogues. Leibnitz, in accordance with this view, speaks of ' Monads,' of which the most perfect are the germs of Men, the less perfect those of the inferior animals and of plants, and still lower in the series are those of unorganised bodies. 'Bhe souls which in time become those of men, appear first in other organ- isations. All this, fanciful as it is, had its birth in very early Philosophy — passed into Theology and Theosophy, and with Goethe seems to struggle for a sort of poetical existence. His Horaunculus is even more naked than Para- celsus's little man ; he is like the English con- veyancer's Scintilla Juris, ready to exist if it can but find the opportunity. We must, for want of another word, call the little thing a soul as PREFACE. XXXIX yet without a body, but wishing for one ; as yet undarkened by the walls of that prison in which, if it ever becomes clothed with the framework of Man, it will see nothing as it in truth is, but every- thing under some false aspect or other. Homun- culus appears, and his commission is, as far as Faustus is concerned, to free him from the limi- tation in which he is placed. Should he wake here, he dies upon the spot. Woodlake and swans and solitary stream, And river-nymphs that from the water gleam, And Hope and Love are his entrancing; dream. How could he to this den be reconciled? Even I, that am as cheerful as a child, And suit myself to all things, scarce can bear This dungeon. Off with him ! * Our manikin counsellor, it would seem, knows what he is about. Whatever powers of perception he has brought with him from the region he in- habited before being introduced to our acquaint- ance, have been already exercised in some relation to Faustus, Perhaps he comes from the myste- rious land which Faustus visited in search of the phantoms exhibited before the Emperor. He adverts to Faustus's visit to the Mothers. He sees Faustus's dreams, and he is able to draw inferences, as though from some old experience that almost attains to the clearness of prophetic * Infra, p. 133. Xl PREFACE. vision — nay, so clearly does he describe what he sees, that some of Goethe's commentators tell us he is the Dream which he describes, — and say that we are to look for Homunculus's essence in the mind of the sleeping hero of the story. He is, say they, Faustus's Desire for the Beautiful. With the commencement of that desire he originates : and with its attainment, — but in this they ai'e wise beyond the letter — he disappears. In the Homunculus, what Goethe wished to ex- hibit was, the pure enteleclieia — the understanding, the spirit as it enters upon life, previous to any ex- perience, for the spirit of man, such was his belief, comes into life already furnished with high gifts. ' We have by no means acquired all by learning, we have brought much with us ; ' in his own case, he said, the world had been known to him prior to any experience. He then pointed to his grand- daughter Alma, and thought her intelligence and immediate apprehension of whatever was presented to her mind, a proof of the truth of this view. ' Yes ! ' added Eckermann, when telling this to Riemer, ' Goethe himself has a kind of respect for Homunculus.' The 'kind of respect' does not pre- vent him from amusing himself at Homunculus's expense. It is like Johnson playing with Goldsmith. And Goldsmith as contrasted with Johnson's other associate, the ' born Northern,' has now and then PREFACE. xli passed before us, when we think of Homunculus and Mephistopheles. Goethe seems to play with Homunculus as with a pet child. Riemer speaks of Homunculus as of a person grown old in Uni- versity life, and entering into the world with all the simplicity and all the shrewdness of one so brought up. In the interpretation of these masks, we think Goethe's commentators err, in seeking under each some one character — making them as definite as though the poet had called them by the names of Hope, Fraud, Superstition, Hypocrisy, &c., instead of thinking of them with the human element superadded in the very fact of their being personified. We should think of them, not as though read of in an essay, but as seen acting on the stage ; for in this way did they come before the poet's mind — in this way did he seek, as far as dramatic words could do it, to bring before his reader's eye every picture of this wonderful work. Let the reader for a moment imagine himself a spectator, and, as far as he can, bring before his eye the incidents of the story. Picture the mid- i summer night scene with which it opens — the sun- rise — the music — the court-scenes — the masque with its Nymphs, and Pans, and Satyrs — its Flower- girls, Fates, and Furies; then the varied scenery of temple and theatre — the moonlit Pharsalian xlii PKEPACE. fields, -with the strange groups assembled there — University halls and chambers— Gothic castle and court-yard— Greeks, Germans, brought out in strongest contrast to the eye. Imagine the calm, almost statuesque, movement, the measured sta- tuesque recitation — the phrase is not too strong to express that which was a part of the charm that elevated and subdued the audience when I saw Miss Faucit realise the Antigone of Sophocles, and with which Mrs. Kean gave life to Talfourd's ' Ion.' Think of them, and not of the dead words of the stage direction, and you have the poet's thought. In the Helena and the Euphorion think of Meyer- beer's music * — illustrating, or rather expressing, the poet's conception — and you approach to his thought. Bring before you — but I anticipate an after-part of the poem — the Venice which the old man has created from the sea. Build up before your eye the cells of the poet's Montserrat, and see the shapings in which he would express man's inner spiritual nature. Seek not to lower con- ceptions which would reach beyond the limits of man's unaided understanding, but remember what the poet never forgot — that man has faculties higher than t\ie understanding— and that to mea- sure imagination by such a standard is in fact to deny its existence as a distinct faculty. Every- * Eckennann, Feb. 12, 1829. PREFACE. xliii thing in this poem was thought of by the poet as brought before the eye or ear, while everything thus shown is not alone picture but symbol. The interest of the picture often exists for those who do not see the symbol. That Goethe expected this second part of ' Faust ' to be brought out on the stage is told us by Eckermann, who even gives the poet's plans for the representation of scenes that would seem to defy the theatrical artist. Ecker- mann's book is in many ways interesting, in none more than in its account of the second part of ' Faust,' as it grew under the poet's hand. For- tunately for the English reader, it has been well translated by Mr. Oxenford. It is astonishing to think by how few, almost ap- parently accidental, touches this whole character of Homunculus is created. I know nothing like it except the almost kindred art of Eetsch, in his earlier sketches from ' Faust,' who by mere outline las given absolute body to the poet's conceptions. Homunculus, it would appear, has been in a more cheerful climate than that in which he now is. I had almost said, in a sunnier land, but I am not quite sure whether he ever moves at all in actual sunlight. The climate of which he speaks is one of those — Where, they say, The night is more beloved than day. Xliv PKEFACB. And he purposes to take Faustus to the Valley of the Peneios, which he describes perhaps not quite accurately, but in the tone of one who ought to know it well. Well as he thinks he knows Place, Time is an element which he can be scarcely said to breathe, and his descriptions of the struggles going on in that land in Faustus's day are very like those which, at the time this part of the poem was written, were distracting Greece. Whatever in- terest of this kind the country might present, could be nothing to that which attaipM^fco it in another point of view. The Night of Mtistus's trance is that of the classical Walpurgis feSe — a might on which the battle-field of Pharsalia is each year visited, not alone by the warriors who took part in the battle, and who seem to wish to re-enact it, but by ' the legion of Hellenic Story,' and ' the Fabulous Shapings of the days of old,' to whom a more real existence is ascribed than the poet concedes to the actors in the historic scenes that have to all ap- pearance disposed of the fortunes of the World. A truer world than of the senses is that which Man's Imagination builds up for itself. In it can be no deception. Caesar and Pompey vanish. Illusion fades off, and leaves room for the realities of Imagination. Homunculus, who knows a thing or two, seems to know Mephistopheles pretty well ; and thouo-h PREFACE. xlv he thinks there cannot be much of attraction for Mephistopheles in. the proposed expedition, yet there is something ; — he will find Thessalian ■witches there. This decides the old witch-master, and he wraps up Faustus and himself in the old mantle, and they travel through the air in the old style. We are now in Greece, or rather Faustus and Mephistopheles are floating above it, guided by Homunculus, who shines before them with a st pajlie r light than the marsh-flre of the First Is they are about to descend, they see one of the Thessalian witches of whom Iculus had spoken. Erichtho is known to jaders of Lucan as a witch, who, with I of raising the dead to life, has re-animated a corpse, to show to the son of Pompey the issue of thi approaching battle of Fharsalia. G-oethe imagines her each year, on the eve of the battle- day, revisiting the field, and bringing before her le unforgotten incidents of that old time. isee^ J What seem to be gray tents, \ i^pres^^Siive-like far and wide, phantomy reappearance ^Of that Tall-anxious night, — dread night of deepest There are several tales of battle-fields, both * Infra, p. 137 . xlvi PEEPACE. in classical and mediEeval story, where the dead ■warriors are supposed, on the anniversary night of some great battle, to retiew the fight. The battle of Marathon was thus fought again for centuries : — A world of wonders hither might be thrown Of spriifhts and spectres, as that frequent noise, Oft hqard upon the pUiin of Marathon, Of neighing horses, and of martial boys. The Greek the Persian nightly there destroys In hot assault, embroiled in a long war : Four hundred years did last these dreadful toys. As doth by Attic records plain appear : The seeds of hate by death so little slaked are ! * Something like the renewal of the old battle seems to have been expected by Erichtho. She is, if this were her thought, disappointed. The moon rises and the tents disappear. The night is, however, a magic one, and the reflection of the blood shed of old on those fields seems to be breathed up again from the ground ; and, as the "blood of slain victims allured the phantoms that Ulysses saw when he visited the underworld, the strangle gleam now attracts the old beino's of Grecian fable. We are in the land of Fable, the element of ■ F<|ustus's life, as Homunculus says; and here, so Iftmunculus divines, he must recover. IiV^his land of Fable each visitor is pretty sure^ Henry More, ' Song of the Soul.' PREFACE. xlvii of finding what, he seeks. What are the purposes of our travellers ? Faustus has pursued his imagined Helen beyond the land of Dream, into this land of Fable ; and beyond the land of Fable — if we are to confine this name to the region in which the classical Walpurgis festival is held — will he pursue the phantom. Homuncultjs, the hero of the night, would seem to have his own purposes. He is eager to enter upon life. Like Faustus himself, he would strive beyond the limits within which he is confined — he would break the glass which isolates him. Is he not, in his degree, a little Faustus, too ? At present we know him but as a spirit — an elementary spirit — '\ Who has not earned a name, . . . Belongs to the elements.* And belonging to the elements, for him there is no repose. We are told from the first that his distinguishing attribute is action : he would move actively and efiectively. If we are to connect him with Faustus, is he not more than tlie desire which seeks a union with Helen? Is he not the impulse which will animate him when he passes into active life from the land of Dream and of Fable ? However, the poet repi'esents him now as from Faustus, and our narrative must * Infra, p. 310. Xlviii PREFACE,,', not deviate from the letter of the text ; while we yet do not allow ourselves to forget that the poet is exercising a magic of his own in a region, Where fancies vague are gifted with strange life, Surprise tlie ear by voices of their own, And shine distinct, and fair, and shadowless, Self-radiant on a self-illumined stage. Pure Forms, whose Being is the magic light In which they move, all Beauty ! How it hangs Enamoured round tliem ! In wbat tender folds The thin veil, flowing with the sportive breeze Of dallying thought, returns and fondly stirs The amber ringlets o'er each little brow. Fans softly the blue veins, and lingering lies, Trembling and happy, on the kindred cheek ! The purposes of Mephistopheles are not dis- tinctly communicated, and they have the appearance of arising accidentally. The Classical Walpurgis Night will, perhaps, be rendered more easily intel- ligible by saying something of the locality of each scene. A- sentence in Lucan, which describes the Peneios as discoloured by the blood shed in the battle, perhaps led Goethe to place the Pharsalian fields on the banks of the Peneios. The part of the poem called the Classical Walpurgis Night is divided into four parts as far as place is con- cerned. The first, the Pharsalian fields. The second, the Lower Peneios. Of the third, the stage-direction is ' the Upper Peneios, as before.' PREFACE. ' xlix And the fourth part exhibits to us the -35gean Sea and its shores. In the first our travellers find themselves in company with Sphinxes, Griffins, Arimaspians, &c., in which are supposed to be represented the old Mythologies, from which the Grecian was derived. The Sphinxes are Egypt, the Griffins Persia. Faustus and Mephistopheles are diffferently affected by these ancient figures. Faustus sees the Power and the Beauty which they symbolise and predict. Mephistopheles's sense of propriety is shocked and scandalised by the Nude. A chorus of Sirens is heard from the trees, and seek to win to themselves the atten- tions of the travellers. We soon lose sight of Faustus. He has gone to the Lower Peneios, has there met Cheiron, and is by him led to the temple of Manto, from which there is a secret pas- sage to Hades, whither he descends, like Orpheus . of old, to try to obtain Helena from Proserpine. When he has parted company with Mephi- stopheles, the latter too has his love-fits, and we have a sort of half-angry, half-amorous dialogue between him and one of the Sphinxes. Game more attractive catches his eye, and he leaves the Sphinxes for a group of Lamiae, and finally we have him in a den where monsters not unlike the Gorgons dwell — the three daughters of Phorcys, Goddesses, the old sinner says, uglier than the c 1 PEEFACE. Deadly Sins. He persuades them that if the world knew of them, there would be everywhere statues of the three black Graces ; Junos and Pallases would be nothing to them. Kings — was Goethe thinking of kings of Bavaria ? — would inaugurate ■ — is not that the word ? — the statues. This is irresistible. In the depths of their nature Mephi- stopheles's oratory has found the woman's heart. They are tempted by the hope of being exhibited in^sculpture or painting, but are unwilling to stir from their den. This presents no serious difficulty. There are few things which such an agent as" Mephistopheles would not undertake, and he pro- poses to compress their triple being into two, and consign tp him for a season the outward seeming of the third — more indeed than the outward seem- ing — the actual real self. All this is the easiest possible thing — in Mythology. This he, if any one, is the professor to prove, and the attorney to carry out in practice. He thus obtains the sem- blance or living mask of a Phorcyad, in which character he appears in the ' Helena ' — a hideous old woman — not the less Mephistopheles, thus uniting and reconciling the Classical and the Bomantic. Before this, however, has occurred, the Phar- salian plain, or that part of the plain where the PREFACE. Sphinxes and GriflSns are, is disturbed by symp- toms of coming earthquake, and a giant, pushing a mountain up before him, makes his appearance. Goethe calls him Seismos, and tells you that he is the same Titan who had fixed the wandering island Delos, and who had effected other Vulcanic wonders. The Sphinxes will not stir ; the Griffins, alive to their own interest, think they can make something of it ; the Sirens, of whom we must say a word presently, determine to fly the place as unlucky. Wherever there are unusual appear- ances, you will find physicists endeavouring to explain them, and adding to the difficulties. The spectral mountain and its accompaniments bring up Thales and Anaxagoras, each in his own way philosophising about it, and Homunculus joins them in the hope of learning something that may be of use to him for his own purposes. The con- versation between Thales and Anaxagoras is on the questions agitated by the geologists of Goethe's own day. Thales is the Wernerian Neptunist, Anaxagoras the Vulcanist. In an after part of the drama, the Vulcanists are again introduced, and the defence of their system given to Mephi- stopheles. The conversation occurs from the strange incident of the hill rising above the sur- face of the earth. Anaxagoras refers it to igneous matter forcing its way through the crust of the c2 lii PEErACE. earth, and he refers to such incidents the present appearance of the globe. Thales regards the phe- nomenon as an isolated accident. The hill has scarcely arisen when it becomes crowded with trees and shrubs, and in this Goethe is supposed to have intended to state that each part of the earth has its own peculiar vegetation. Its own peculiar inhabitants Seismos, the hill — called after the Titan to whom it owes its existence — has ; and a strange set they are — all little fello.ws, Thumb- lings, Fingerlings, Pygmies; there is marrying and giving in marriage; there is industry and prosperity : and Anaxagoras thinks it would not be a bad speculation for our little friend, the manikin adventurer, to become king there — ' Ho- munculus of the Mountain.' Homunculus wisely declines ; the society is not long without its wars ; we are in some Outopia or land of No-where, nor does Time exist here, and we scarcely have seen the hill arise before we find the population with all the vices of an old people. We have ambition, we have aristocratic and landed gentry, we have battles for plumes and feathers, and something of a popular insurrection is got up or threatened, of which — is not this like Ireland ? — the Emmets are among the leaders. The Dactyls — the Idsean Dactyls were in the old books of Mythology described as workers in iron — complain that they PREFACE. liii have to prepare the iron and to forge the chains with which the Pygmies hold them enslaved. The language seems that of a modern people inveighing against what they regard as oppression : — None now to rescue, all resistance vain, We knead the iron, and they forge the chain. We are and must be slaves — oppressors they. And helpless we, but hope a better day, And, till its dawn, repine, but must obey.* A war against natural enemies unites these hiU- folk, and the battles of the Pygmies and Cranes exhibit the contests of Vulcanists and Neptunists. The fall of a stone from the Moon ends the battle. We lose sight of Anaxagoras, and Thales and Homunculus make their way to the jEgean. Before we pursue the travels of Homunculus, we have to tell something more of the wonders of this miraculous night. On it the anniversary Festival of Ocean is held. Old traditions have told that Venus rose from the sea. These traditions are preserved, and an interest, with which our human affections can more easily sym- pathise, is given them by her sceptre and throne having been transferred to the sea-nymph Galatea, daughter of Nereus and Doris. We had the Sirens, in the first scenes of the Classical Walpurgis Night, on the plains of Pharsalia. They then appear on * Infra, p. 74. liv PEEFACE. the banks of the Peneios, and announce the earth- quake which accompanies the ascent of Seismos. They counsel all to leave a dangerous neighbour- hood, and summon whomsoever they can make hear them to the Ocean festival. Among others who obey the summons are the Nereides and Tritons. Goethe distinguishes between the Nereides and the Dorides. The Nereides in his poem represent a- lower state of civilisation than the Dorides, the ' Graces ' of the Sea. On the festival night the Nereides appear, decked in barbaric splendour, with crowns, and chains, and bracelets, the spoils of shipwrecked mariners. In the pictures at Pompeii, the Nereides are so decorated. On this night they are disposed to show themselves some- thing more than sea-shapes, more than fishes — nay, the cruel delight with which they still in their songs dwell upon what they have gained by wrecks, seems not to prevent them from assisting the celebration of the night by bringing to the festival gods with whom till then our classical Sirens, at least, have had little or no acquaintance. They go to Samothrace for the Cabiri, gods of whom little is known, but of that little the Nereides men- tion, with what looks like sympathy, that when a vessel is wrecked they save the crew. , The idols, are not, to the eye, of a very imposiijjr. Ifind, for '■' >' ■ PREFACE. Iv Homunculus takes them for old crocks, but any idolatry is an advance : — Fancy is the power That first unsensualises the dark mind, Giving it new delights, and bids it swell With new activity.* And the Sirens see, with delighted amazement, the Nereides, on their return : What far-off gleam moves o'er the enchanted seas. As tho' white sails flowed hither with the breeze, Lustrous with light ? Oh, what a change ! are these The same wild women of the wave ? these, the Nereides ? f Of the Cabiri themselves it is not improbable that some of Goethe's readers may think there is too much. A work of Schelling's on the ' Gods of Samothrace,' in which he thought he had traced the details of an early system of religion, which, had spread extensively in the conterminous dis- tricts of Asia and Europe, led to this scene in the ' Walpurgis Night.' Schelling had described an ascending row of imaginary existences worshipped as gods, some of them, if not all, identical with man's wants. They were negations. The first was Ceres, identical in his system, not with food, but with Hunger and Thirst; then came Proserpine, something, perhaps, more positive, but I do not feel quite spre of this, for she represented ' Sensible • Coleridge. t Ii^a. P- 206. Iri PREFACE. Being.' The third was Dionysus, ruler of the world of Spirit ; and the fourth was Cadmillus, ' Nature and Spirit,' modifying each the other.* A controversy arose between Schelling and Voss, and pamphlets were written on the subject, and read by a few scholars in . Germany, but they have not made their way to England. Three of these gods would have assisted at the festival, but for a slight difficulty — They waited — 'T would take some little time— to be created.f During this expedition of the Nereides, Homun- culus has not been idle. He and Thales visit Nereus to ask his advice how Homunculus is to enter upon life. From Nereus they learn little ; but are referred to Proteus, who goes through his old transformations, and then tells Homunculus of those which the germinal principle of life goes through from the lowest animalcular forms to the highest it can attain. All is enjoyment till it reaches its ultimate stage, that of Man ; after that all is troubled and clouded, for man is always striving beyond the limits of his physical nature. To the sea-gods, as to Mephistopheles, this is not suggestive of man's having in himself a germ of good beyond mere nature. Whether Homunculus ends in assuming what would appear humanity ♦ Eiitscher. | Infra, p. 208. PEEPACE. Ivii — the life in which the Helena and Euphorion of Goethe simulate human beings — is not so revealed by the poet as to be beyond dispute. Homunculus and Thales move along the shore to a point, described by a more recent traveller * — where the land Ends in a narrow tongue of sparkling strand,f which has the advantage of commanding a good view of all that the Ocean festival has to exhibit, and which is a convenient place for Proteus to carry out his purposes with respect to Homun- culus — On my back I carry thee, To the Ocean marry thee.J We are still in the midst of mystery. The re- ligions of old time appear at the festival. We are in a magic circle, in which we cannot always dis- tinguish between gods and their worshippers. To have past from the god to the man, where the god was an old crock, or something like it, was an ascent. To have sculptured the god into some- thing of human shape, was a gain — at least in a world where Beauty was the object of worship; • There is one point with a double view of the sea on each side, which is most transcendent, — Lord Carlisle's ' Turkish and Greek Waters,' 155. t Infra, p. 213. t Infra, p. 216. Iviii PREFACE. and the Telchines of Rhodes now appear, hearing the trident of Neptune, entrusted to them for the night. Ehodes, or the nymph from whom the island takes its name, is called by Pindar the daughter of Aphrodite, and the bride of the Sun. The lines in ' Faust ' which des6ribe Rhodes are almost a translation from Pindar, and the scholiast 'on Pindar : — If a wreath of thin vapour the blue heaven obscure, A beam and a breeze, and the island is pure.* The legend in Pindar which gives the island to Apollo is happily told by Lord Carlisle : — When at creation's radiant dawn uncurled, Eolled the grey vapours from a new-made world, Each bright immortal chose a home below, Which most his presence and his name should know.' Phoebus was absent and was forgotten in the dis- tribution. However, he saw the island where it yet slept under the waves, A brighter, greener bower than all the rest. ' Rise, lovely island, from the crystal flood. Rise, clothed with harvest, vintage, lawn and wood ; * 911 « 3|l * * Spread thy young bosom to my golden ray ! On thee through all the year shall breathe and gleam My brightest zephyr and my sunniest beam.' f * Infra, p. 215. f Lord Carlisle's ' Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters ' p. 145. PEErACB. lix The Telchines of Rhodes, be they priests, or magicians, or gods — for the mythologists claim them in all these characters — exultingly proclaim that in Rhodes the first statues of the gods were made, or rather the first statues of the gods in human shape, and that everywhere through the island were statues of Apollo in every aspect which a representation of the stories of the god required. Here a hundred bright forms of himself meet Ms sight, Now giant, now stripling, all mildness, all might, Here, in this glorious land. Sculpture began, Gods and the godlike to image in man.* The -Telchines are regarded by mythologists as expressing whatever interrupted, retarded, or assisted early civilisation. They are repre- ' sented sometimes as beneficent, sometimes as evil- disposed, capricious, jealous, addicted to magic. Makers and consecrators of the first idols, they conveyed to them the equivocal power which renders them alternately objects of adoration and of execration. They have power not alone over external nature, but over the hearts of men and gods.f The next object that attracts our travellers, * Infra, p. 215. t Welker: Prometheus Trilogie. Gigniaut's note to volume T. of his translation of Creuzer. Ix PKEFACE. whom Nereus has now joined, is a miraculous flight of doves from Paphos, preceding or accom- panying the shell-chariot of Galatea. The doves Goethe had found on the coins and medals of Cyprus; and the stories of their accompanying the car of Venus, when it was brought out on her festivals, are given by Athenseus. All that be- longed to the festivals of Venus is regarded as having been rightfully transmitted to Galatea. The car itself is now seen brought by the Pselli and Marsi along the moonlit sea. The Sirens describe the procession, and they dwell on the difference between the Nereides and Derides, to the latter of whom Goethe ascribes human beauty and human feelings — Gently move, with measured speed, Kound the chariot, ring in ring : Then flow on, a twofold line, Side by side, and intertwine In your windings serpentine. Xebeides, come ye ! Wild women of the sea. Built in robustest mould, Free, vigorous, and bold. With joyous gambolling. Tumultuous jubilee Of Nature's savage glee ! Come, gentle DoKtoES ! Of forms more delicate. Whom joy doth not elate, PEEPACE. Ixi To Galatea bring, In every sister face, Features, in which we trace The Mother of the race — A more than earthly, more than heavenly grace. The god-like earnestness of mien, flower of immortal birth — The winningness, the smile serene, of daughters of the earth.* The Derides are described as instrumental in saving from shipwreck mariners with whom they fall in love, and for whom they solicit from Nereus the gift of immortality in vain. The restlessness of the waves is a type of the futility of hoping that love or life can, as the gift of mere nature, be in the individual an abiding thing : — As to Immortality — Zeus has the gift of it — not I — The waves, you rock on, still must move : Their restlessness knows nothing of This fancy of abiding love. Forget it ; and with gentle hand Lay the youths tenderly on land.f Galatea at last appears. The appearance is but for a moment, 'yet,' says Nereus looking on her, yet the sight, A moment's lustre as it speeds away, Will make the whole year bright.J * Infra, pp. 220-221. f ^^f^a, p. 222. X Infra, p. 223. Ixii PREFACE. Thales becomes actually inspired by the sight of all these wonders, and ascribes all to the in- fluence of the sea ; to which he refers the origina- tion, the development, and the preservation of life. But what of HoMUNCTJLUS ? Homunculus has been spirited away by Proteus. How he separates from him we are not told ; but in their last con- versation, we have reason to think Homunculus prepared for the experiment of seeking life in the Ocean — HoMDNCUiUS. In the calm moisture all on which my light Casts its strong beam is exquisitely fair. Proteus. Life's moisture 't is that makes the lamplet bright. And 't will chime proudly in Life's ambient air ! * This is followed by an incident which Nereus describes — Pound Galatea's feet Flames pant and play — Now in strong blaze, now languishing away — As if the throbbings were the throbbings of The wildly agitated pulse of Love.f The Sirens who have introduced us to the Ocean festivai, and who have, as a chorus, been present- throughout, now tell us of what seems to be Homunculus's last appearance, in a tone of exulta- tion : — * Infra, p. 225. f Ibid. PEEFACE. Ixiii What fiery wonder spreading o'er the sea Clothes it with such surpassing brilliancy ? Billows on billows dash with lightning flash. Bodies, that through the ocean move to-night, Move ringed with fire, and in a path of light. Everywhere fire ! Hail, Eros ! hail ! with Thee The world began : oh ! still its ruler be.* Are we to suppose that Homunculus is ' Cupid or Atom ? ' f Are we to think, with many of Goethe's commentators, that Homunculus has, like the Marsh-light of the Walpurgis Night of the First Part, been created by the poet for a particular purpose — that of leading Faustus to the scene of the Classical Walpurgis Night — that he ceases to be when that object is accomplished, and that he perishes when his glass is dashed to pieces ? It ill becomes me to- dogmatise, but this view seems inconsistent with all the intimations as to his growth — as to the transformations which he must pass through before assuming the shape and con- dition of man, and to the allusions as to the ultimate form, male or female, in which he may put on life when he attains to humanity. In Gralatea some of his commentators see Helen, in Euphorion they discern Homunculus. In any- thing said or written by Goethe, there is no authority for either statement. That Homunculus • Infra, p. 226. f See Bacon's ' Sapientia Teterum.' Ixiv PEEFACE. reappears I incline to believe. The glass, in which he is ensheathed, is, by the arrangement between liim and his fellow-travellers, to ring when the time comes for their reunion, and it rings when he commences his sea-change Into something rich and strange. We have Goethe's authority that the Helena and the Classical Walpurgis Night are to be read as one,* and we find Mephistopheles reappear in the Helena as Phorcyas, and Faustus as a German prince. Does the monad, or germ of life — the impa- tient appetency — after passing through more meta- morphoses than Darwin or his grandfather ever dreamed of, appear, not as Euphorion, which has been repeatedly suggested, but as Helen herself? The ' idea ' which Faustus sought in the realm of the Mothers — the * eidolon ' which Faustus now seeks in the underworld — must be vitalised ; and is the fiery particle, which we have till now known as Homunculus, the living principle by which the magic is efiected ? How Faustus has obtained Helena from Proser- pine is, unfortunately, a secret. That the poet had intended representing Faustus as soliciting her from Proserpine, there can be no doubt, as he * Correspondence with Zelter. PREFACE. Ixv mentioned to Eckermann his plan for such a scene. He perhaps abandoned the plan, and thought he had accomplished his purpose in a different way, as he sometimes spoke of the second part of ' Faust ' as completed. However, a letter to W. von Hum- boldt, written a little before his death (Dec. 1, 1831), speaks of gaps yet to be filled up ; and he, perhaps, thought he might supply what was de- ficient when he had the whole before him in print, as he would, had he lived a few months longer. I scarcely think, however, Faustus's visit to Pro- serpine, and his seeking Helena from her, consistent with the supposition that Helena and Galatea are one. But of these mysteries let me speak doubt- fully. ' Eleusis servat quod ostendat revisentibus.' We come to the third act of the drama, that on which the whole may be said to revolve ; that which is by Goethe described as having occupied him, in one way or other, for almost the whole of his life. In the year 1780, he was already engaged at Helena as a part of ' Faust,' and in his day-book we find an entry of his reading it to some of the Court circle at Weimar in March of that year. In 1797, and again in 1800, it is mentioned in his correspondence with Schiller. Towards the close of his life, he describes the phantom of Helena as having fioated before his imagination for more than fifty d Ixvi PREFACE. years. He speaks of it at times as though the phantom lady had always presented to him the same appearance — at times as if she had un- dergone many a change. This part of ' Faust ' was often taken up, often laid aside. An almost super- stitious feeling made him avoid speaking on the subject, as though in the fear that the phantom would, as is said of spirits, vanish utterly if he ventured to tell of her visitings. In 1827, he appears to have seriously devoted himself to this part of the poem, wishing to shape into a con- sistent whole the fragments which he had worked out from time to time. He speaks of the ' Helena ' rather as a drama in itself than as an act in ' Faust,' though Faustus's union with Helen, effected through the instrumentality of Mephi- stopheles, being part of the old puppet play and of the legendary story of Faustus, made him regard it as an indispensable part of his subject. The ' Helena ' was the first portion printed of the second part of ' Faust ;' and it was given rather as an interlude, a something to be imagined as dream, as fantastic representation, than as a substantive part of Faustus's actual life. It was called, on its first publication, a ' Classico-Romantic Phantas- magoria.' It is often described as though it and the Classical Walpurgis Night were to be regarded as enacted in dream. Dreams they are not for PKEFACE. Ixvii the activity of the Will is ever present in Faustus, in Mephistopheles, in Homunculus. In Goethe's correspondence with Schiller, the opening scenes of the ' Helena ' are mentioned. He felt that he had succeeded in the production of something in the spirit of the Greek dramatists, and for a moment thought of continuing the poem in that spirit, and of giving up the plan of closing it as an opera. At that time he must have thought of discon- necting it from 'Faust' altogether. Schiller urged him to continue it as originally designed, and not to fear uniting in it the ' Classical ' and ' Barbaric ' elements. Schiller's death occurred in 1805, and Goethe, though the phantom of Helena never ceased to play before his imagina- tion, does not seem to have resumed it as a subject of poetical composition for many a long year after. Men do not know what they are, and how de- pendent they are on the appreciation of others for the kind of exertion in which they shall be engaged. Many of Goethe's ballads grew out of Schiller's sympathy, and it is not improbable that of ' Faust ' nothing but the first Titanic fragments would have existed but for the way in which they were received by Schiller. In a letter of June 1797, in reply to some suggestions of Schiller's, with reference to the continuation of ' Faust,' he says, ' It gives one spirits to work when he sees d 2 Ixviii PEEFACE. his thoughts and purposes indicated [bezeichnet] from without ; and your participation is, in more than one sense, productive. You have created for me a new youth, and once more restored me to poetry, which I had almost given up.' In one of his letters, of a somewhat earlier date, speaking of his intercourse with Schiller, he says, ' It was a new spring to me, in which all seeds shot up and gaily blossomed in my nature.' I feel no doubt that had Coleridge's ' Remorse ' been fairly appreciated when it was first offered to the stage, we should have had, instead of his comments on Shakespeare, the works of a great dramatic poet, in many of the highest qualities of mind rivalling the greatest of alLpoets. Goethe, writing to W. von Humboldt, says that he publishes the 'Helena' ' without thinking of any public, or even of a single reader ;' and in his conversations with Eckermann, he expresses extreme impatience at Eckermann's suggestion of the possible popularity of some parts of ' Faust,' of which they had been speaking ; and yet, when the ' Helena ' appeared and was received in France, Russia, and England with admiration by some of the best writers of those countries, and when it became the subject of careful comment in the works which undertake to give accounts of current literature, the poet not only manifested exceeding delight, but immediately PREFACE. Ixix proceeded to seize such moments of health and leisure as were yet aflTorded him towards the close of life to continue the work. Of these accounts, that of Carlyle seems to have given him most pleasure ; and to it, even more than to Ecker- mann's daily pressing the subject on him, and assisting him in many ways, we are disposed to attribute the completion of the work. A controversy, on which we must not enter, had arisen in Germany, on the subject of what was called the Classical and the Romantic. From G-er- many it passed into France, and, extending beyond the range of Literature and Art into Religion, it soon became mixed up with Politics. The names have, we believe, died out, or no longer have the meanings which they were first used to express, as is the way in all controversies ; but there must have been something real at the root of this dispute, as it is perpetually recurring in one form or another. Goethe, in more than one place, tells us that the Classical and the Romantic, in their highest forms, are one — that whatever is best is classical ; and that at the close of the fifteenth century Europe was saved, by the re-introduction of Classical Lite- rature, from a Barbarism everywhere spreading. He would not himself give to that Barbarism the name of Romantic, for he intimates that a valuable literature was growing up, expressive of modes of Ixx PEEFACB. thinking not familiar to the ancients, and clothed in forms different from theirs. Yet he seems to say, that for the intrusive barbarism the name of Romantic was claimed. We may for a moment assume that his 'Helena' represents Grecian Cul- ture ; but whatever she may represent in our poet's allegory, we are now concerned not with the ultimate thought that may be there embodied, but with the way in which Helena is brought before the eyes of the spectators. By whatever magic she is won into life, the poet calls on us to admit ' that the L^real Helena may step forth, on antique tragedy-cothurnus, before her primitive abode in Sparta.' The ' Helena ' opens by the appearance of He- lena before the palace of Menelaus.' The palace is hers — hers by descent from her father Tyn- darus. She is represented as having just re- turned after many years of absence — the ten years which the siege of Troy occupied, and those after- wards passed in long wanderings. She returns with feelings of serious apprehension as to her fate — for it would appear that she resumes life under the circumstances at which her actual life had closed — and among the various accounts of her death, Goethe adopts that which we find in the Troades of Euripides, who makes her , sacri- ficed by Menelaus, on his return to Sparta. PREFACE. Ixxi Goethe plays with his subject, and this cloud of allegory hovers about capriciously. In another part of the poem Goethe has made use of another legend about Helena, which Euripides also sup- plied, altogether inconsistent with this. When she now appears, she tells us that suspicious words, and yet more suspicious silence of Mene- laus during the voyage, have given her cause of fear. She was ordered by him on their landing to make arrangements for a sacrifice, but the victim is not named. The Eumenides of iEschylus opens with a fine scene, which has been happily translated by Mr. Blackie, in which the priestess of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, having entered the temple, re- turns in fear and horror, having seen the Furies as they lay asleep in the temple. They are not women, but Gorgons — Gorgons more hideous than paint- ing could venture to exhibit Gorgons — and we find Goethe in this scene, suggested by that of JEs- chylus, which it more than rivals, representing his Helena entering the palace and returning over- come with horror. The reader must remember that Mephistopheles possessed himself of the mask — or the ' person,' in a yet stronger sense than that of mask — of one of the Phorcyads, and Mephistopheles it is whom she sees in this strange guise. Helena now endeavours to describe the hideous spectre she has seen to the Chorus — her female Ixxii PEEFACB. attendants, Trojan captives * — who, as far as the poem is allegorical, seem to represent the Barbaric element in one of its phases, but the Barbaric element subjected to, and modified, by Grecian cul- ture. ' I speak,' she says — I speak but to the winds. Words, all in vain, Seek to build up and to embody shapes. But see her ! — and she ventures to the light ! t Phorcyas now appears, and a serious contest arises between her and the Chorus. A magnificent " ode of the Chorus, some stanzas of which are more striking than the choral odes of ^schylus, describ- ing the fall of Troy, is followed by a strange alter- cation — too close an imitation of the Greek forms for my taste — in which Mephistopheles, Phorcyas, and the members of the Chorus, each in single lines of verse, pour out torrents of abuse, the point of which is not always very intelligible, but in which each party would seem to know more than is good of the other. Phorcyas seems rather to have the best of it. She makes allusions to the group, as though they properly belonged to Hades, and utters something like a threat that they shall be sent back to it. Helena interposes. In these disputes she has felt a deeper interest than the dis- * Illadum turba et Phrygiis comitata ministris Virsil Mn. 2. • 6 ' •f Infra, p. 237. PREFACE. Ixxiii putants, for the conversation brings back to her the past in dreadful distinctness. Was I all that ? Am I it ? Am I yet To be it ? Dreadful dream ! Dream is it ? — dream ! Am I then — I — the fearful fatal form, The horror, that hath desolated cities ?,* A conversation with Phorcyas brings painfully forward every incident of her life from seven years of age — nay, the incidents of her life are not enough, but her tormentor adverts to her very dreams : — Phorcyas. They say from the void realm of shades, Achilles, Burning in deathless love, did make thee his — He who erewhile had loved — but Fate denied. Helena. An eidol with an eidol I was wedded : A shadowy phantom he, a gleamy apparition. It was a dream — only a dream — and so the very words say. I faint — I fall away from life — am fading into phantoni.t The allusion to her union in some island of the Happy -with Achilles, by v?hom the tradition af- firms her to have had a son, Euphorion, is perhaps intended to prepare us for her union with Faustus, and for the appearance of the modern Euphorion, whom we soon after meet. Helena faints, and the Chorus recommence their attack on Phorcyas, * Infra, p. 245. t Infra, p. 248. Ixxiv PEEPACE. which is interrupted by Helena's recovery. Phor- cyas now addresses her in the language of compli- ment, and affirms that though she herself is not what would be called beautiful, yet she is no bad critic on the subject of beauty; she knows what it is — that she does ! — Me they rail against as hideous, yet I know what beauty is.* Helena does not appear to value the compli- ment at more than its worth. She is anxious to proceed with the sacrifice ordered by Menelaus, till told that she herself is to be the victim. Dwarf figures appear at the call of Phorcyas to make all the necessary arrangements, Helena's terror is in- creased by Phorcyas exclaiming that she hears the trumpet announce the approach of Menelaus. At this moment Helena is told of a way in which she may be saved. In the mountains behind Sparta a body of German warriors have taken possession of the country, and established themselves there for some years ; with them she may place herself and be secure. The suggestion is acted upon. A mist rises, the Chorus describe the objects around them as gradually concealed ; they do not seem to move, hut when the mist has cleared away, the scene has changed to the courtyard of a Gothic castle. * Infra, p. 249, PREFACE. IxXV The castle is Faustus's, and he appears to receive her in the guise of a German prince. We said that Helena had an ancestral right to Sparta ; this is acknowledged by Faustus, who does homage to her .in feudal form : she invites him to ascend the throne with her, and her devo- tion to him is expressed by the strong act of her giving up her whole Being to him — for, even with- out reference to allegory, it is no less — in the adoption of his forms of thought and language. This is skilfully and pleasingly exhibited. She had been addressed on her arrival at the castle by Faustus's warden in the courteous love-rhymes of the German Minnesingers — where, as she says. One tone fits another : If a word strikes the ear, another comes To fondle and to make love to the first.* She asks Faustus is this an art easily acquired, and is told that it is the natural and almost unconscious expression of sympathy, echoing the thoughts and feelings and very intonations of voice of another. Dialogue calls it forth. He dwells upon its effect on the heart and feelings, especially when accompanied by music. They practise the art together, and she soon becomes quite a proficient. The Chorus, who seem not to think much of the poetical part of the perform- * Infra, p. 277. Ixxvi PREFACE. ance, interpret the acted scene plausibly enough into voluptuous indulgence of a passion which they understand but too weU, and describe Faustus and Helena as if they were actual human lovers, and not allegories from Elysian fields and Cim- merian forests. Meanwhile who comes but Mene- laus ? — who announces him but Phorcyas ? always, Faustus says, an instrument of evil ! In ' Mene- laus' Goethe's interpreters see the piracy, exercised in the Greek waters, interrupting tfce settlement of the Greco-German empire. Whatever be the precise danger, it is repelled by Faustus, who divides the country among his warriors on the principles of what is called the feudal system. Dukes — I greet you with the title By command of Sparta's Queen — Lay at Her feet vale and mountain. Yours the empire you thus win. ' Faustus and his warriors have thus created the German empire. Love, however, is not forgotten in the business of war and politics, or, if for a moment forgotten, Love makes himself felt. Still close to Sparta winds the enchanted ground Of blissful Arcady.t And we now are in Arcadia, among its bowers and caverned rocks. The Chorus are seen scat- tered about asleep — Phorcyas awakes them she * Infra, p. 282. f Infra, p. 287. PREFACE. Ixxvii suspects that their dreams are engaged with the subjects which occupy her wakeful attention ; and she tells them of the loves of Faustus and Helena, of which it would seem she has been the confidential manager, and of a lovely boy who makes his appearance among the bowers. He is Euphorion, the son of Faustus and Helena ; and Phorcyas in describing his beauty, and the power of his music, rises into a poetry beyond what would seem to be her nature. Her description leads the Chorus to give from the Homeric hymn the legend of Hermes, which is or ought to be familiar to English readers in Shelley's translation. The sound of a harp is heard — all are affected — Phorcyas, who is not without a taste for music, and who is 'nothing if not critical,' tells the Chorus to throw away their old stories of gods and goddesses. Critics Of a higher school of art Say that from the heart must flow forth All that works upon the heart.* Helena, Faustus, and Euphorion now appear — the parents delighted to witness his boyish gam- bols. We meet him dancing with the Chorus, with one of whom he seems to have got into some lyve scrape. She defies him and disappears, flaring up and lost in air. In Euphorion, as representing * Infra, p. 295. Ixxviii PREFACE. modern poetry, Goethe thought of Lord Byron ; and in the incident we have just mentioned, one of Goethe's commentators sees Byron murdering a mistress, and another reads the real tragedy of his quarrel with his wife, reduced to opera dimensions. The Lady's fate closes the first act of what may be called the opera of Euphorion, for 'Euphorion* is almost a drama in itself. The music ceases at the end of this act. The next exhibits Euphorion as longing for war, and exercising his gift of poetry. The third act takes him to actual scenes of battle, and ends with his death. A dirge is sung by the Chorus — almost un- disguisedly a lament for Lord Byron. The Chorus, to none of whom, except Panthalis, the leader, could anything of individual character be ascribed, become elementary spirits, and we have them describing their future life as Dryads, as Echoes, as Naiads, and as Msenads. The old Faust-story makes Helen and Euphorion vanish together. A passage of Euripides makes his Phantom-Helena pass away into the clouds. This did not answer Goethe's purpose, who had to restore his heroine to the under-worldj but it gives him some help. His Helena disappears : her clothes become clouds, and on them Faustus is carried away. In the Fourth Act the geological discussion is PEEFACE, Ixxix resumed, Faustus and Mephistopheles being now the speakers. Faustus, weary of court-life, seeks a field of exertion. He would create a Venice from the sea, and he calls on Mephistopheles to assist him. They win a battle for the emperor by magic, and Faustus is given the strand as a feoff. We for a while lose sight of Faustus, while the poet exhibits the Emperor and the Kurfiirsts arranging the Golden Bull, and settling the tenure of land in Germany. The settlement is given as accurately as in that valuable English book, which Maginn irreverently calls the ' Comic History of the Middle Ages.' Faustus, who has done most. gets but little, and that little is burthened with tithes and church-rates. Those who had done nothing get all that the Emperor has to give. The Fifth Act is one which does not require much to be said in the way of argument. We liave Faustus earnest in new plans of activity. We have a scene of violence and outrage — in which Faustus's agents outgo their master's com- mands. His last days are haunted by fantastic spectres, but his activity continues till death. I must not comment on his last words, or the con- test of Mephistopheles with the Angels ; still less on the scene which follows. One word more and I have done. In the story of Faustus the Germans see not alone the struggles IXXX PREFACE. of humanity in its weakness and in its strength — which is weakness — but the hero of the poem is also to them in a double sense the poet Goethe and the German people. The very circumstances of the poet's life are read by his biographers and commentators in his great poem. In several of the accounts of the first part this is exhibited in detail, and in Gervinus's ' History of German Poetry,' the incidents of the poet's life give the clue by which he would lead us through the mysterious scenes of the Mothers and the Classical Wal- purgis Night of the Second Part. The poet's desire, for himself and for his country, for a higher cul- ture than Germany could supply,* and the disap- pointment of this hope is, Gervinus tells us, exhi- bited in the apparition of the phantom Faustus has evoked, and in his paralysis when it has vanished. In the poet's visit to Italy, sedulously concealed from all his friends, we have Faustus's midnight flight to the land of ancient Fable ; and in the return, from the Hades of the Past, of the phantom that had possessed Faustus's whole being, and lived for a moment in poetry and its crea- tions, Gervinus sees Goethe's 'Helena,' Goethe's ' Euphorion.' * ' On my beloved books I never once bestowed a thought. The people among whom I lived had not the slightest tinge of literature or science. They were German courtiers : a class of men at that time destitute of mental culture.' — Wilhelm Meister, vol. ii. p. 268. Carlyle. PREFACE. Ixxxi In Faustus's earlier struggles, the effort was to reconcile the claims of the intellectual and moral being with those of Man's animal and sensual nature; and this is said to have been also the struggle of the German people, when, at the close of the fifteenth century, it sought to throw off the theoretical asceticism of the Middle Ages. The view that in Faustus the German people is in this respect among others represented, we find in a hundred places. A sentence of Heine's ' L'AUe- magne ' may be enough to quote as showing this : 'Le peuple allemaud est lui-meme ce savant docteur Faust. II est ce spiritualiste qui recon- nait par I'esprit I'insuffisance de I'esprit qui pre- tend k ces puissances mat^rielles, et qui revendique les droits de la chair.' While I state this view, I forbear dwelling on it, and I may as well say here that in this preface, and in the notes that accom- pany the work, I wish to be understood rather as communicating to my readers materials for forming opinions for themselves than definitely expressing any of my own : as where my author is silent, and where his silence seems to be intentional, it does not become me, in the character of translator, to express any absolute opinion, even had I — which I often have not — formed one. The applica- tion and interpretation of passages more or less allegorical are for the reader, and like those of e Ixxxii PEEFACB. Spenser or the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' differ more or less with every reader. To give fixed meaning to the shifting cloud of allegory is to forget what Allegory, at least Allegory in Goethe's hands, is — It breaks — it wanders Jinto waves — it changes and it changes.* I shall only say, that while each of the views I have stated — and I might have stated many more from Goethe's commentators — is distinct, and so separable that one does not necessarily suggest the other, yet neither does it exclude it, I cannot go the length of Mr. De Vere, who, in his ' Letters from Greece,' tells us that ' all that can take place, intellectually or morally, on the globe, is but an expression of the struggles that may take place in a single bosom. The history of a man is the his- tory of a race. The history of a race is the history of the world.' That the Faustus of the poem may represent the man Goethe and the German people in their moral and intellectual strife, is the more easily conceivable when we remember that the Germans can scarcely be said to have had a litera- ture till the days of Goethe ; that what was called the storm-and-stress period of that literature was also the storm-and-stress period of the individual man, and that in this matter of literature the nation and the man Goethe were, it may be said, * Infra, p. 316. PREFACE. IxXXiii one. I am not disposed to run the parallel be- tween Goethe and his hero as far as the German critics do, nor in reading a work of art be thrown back in this way on the realities of the poet's actual outward life, of which they would call it an idealisa- tion; but I can feel no doubt that of this great poet's inner life this work is throughout the truest manifestation. Through many parts of the poem we have to guide us the assistance of Goethe's letters and of conversations published by his friends, but even these sources of information must be cautiously used. In documents of which there is no reason to doubt the authenticity, the precise meaning is not always clear, and between such documents there is sometimes discrepancy, or seeming dis- crepancy ; we see fragments of letters, or sen- tences accidentally remembered without knowing the circumstances under which they were uttered. Goethe, while engaged with any work of poetry, was unwilling to speak of what most deeply oc- cupied his thoughts. The spirits whom he wished to evoke he feared would refuse to appear if a second person was present, and when it was im- possible to conceal from his secretaries and those about his person the studies in which he was en- gaged, he still sought to mystify them as to the details. What we learn through Eckermann and e2 Ixxxiv PEEPACB. Riemer of the allegories of Faust, was betrayed to them by Goethe rather than distinctly communi- cated. In his correspondence with Schiller, with Zelter, with the Humboldts — his communications to each on the second part of 'Faust' during its progress were essentially different, and from each we may learn something that the others did not know. Thus also with the conversations recorded by Falk and others. This introduction has run to a greater length than I had at all foreseen, and I have but time to say, that the translation is as faithful to the original as I had skill to make it. It has grown up under my hands from day to day and from year to year silently, with no thought . of publication. If asked. Why then translate it ? I can only reply, that this intellectual exertion, such as it is, is in the enjoyment it affords its own great reward. A member of my family became interested in the subject, and felt it desirable to arrange such pas- sages as could be found among papers, disregarded and almost forgotten by me. This accident led me to complete the poem. One advantage has arisen frohi this, that in a poem of which the parts are curiously interwoven, I had at all times every part of the poem before my mind. I have written in verse, not alone because in writing for myself it was the form which gave me most pleasure, but because I feel that I am able PREFACE. Ixxxy to approach in this way expressing my author's precise meaning more perfectly — it may not be so with others, but with me it is so — than in prose. I have read a good deal against verse transla- tion, much of which I am disposed to regard as a skilful pleading for translation in another form, — a form important for its own purposes, and which does not require the aid of such advocacy. It is said that the poet's thought, and the form in which it clothes itself being one, both arising at the same moment, the effort to exhibit that form under circumstances where the thought and the language do not originate at the same moment, must always be a failure. The proposition on which this view rests, and which alone gives it plausibility, is altogether untrue, or true only of improvisation in its lowest forms. Goethe's ' Iphi- genia ' and ' Tasso ' were first written in prose, and afterwards assumed their present shape. The same thing has been said — I know not on what authority — of Schiller's ' Wallenstein.' Goethe himself translated into metre poems from every language of Europe with which he was ac- quainted — from none more than from English. It gratifies and amuses me to be able to say that the writer* who had most anxiously pleaded against verse translation has translated several * Mr. Lewes, ' Life of Goethe.' IxXXvi PREFACE. poems of Goethe into metre with a fidelity which I must assume he felt to be unattainable in prose. But the point is one I feel it idle to discuss. In the whole range of our poets, from Chaucer to Coleridge, I do not remember one who has not occupied himself with translation in metrical forms except Thomson — and even in Thomson whole pages are almost formal translations from the Latin poets — and Goldsmith, the few lines from Laberius, which we find in his 'Essays,' scarcely giving us the right to speak of him as a translator. Several years ago a translation of the second part of ' Faust,' by Mr. Bernays, appeared in succes- sive numbers of the ' Monthly Magazine,' under the able editorship of Mr. Heraud, and soon after in a separate volume. Mr. Bernays, with whose transla- tion I have been long familiar, though in many parts of the work he used prose, felt that verse was the far truer form, probably finding that he could not, without a violation of the proprieties of usage, give adequate expression in prose to the vivid language which a translator of Goethe is compelled, by a sense of fidelity to the original, to adopt. In the same way Monsieur Blaze, who has translated the poem into French prose, every now and then deviates into metrical forms. Since PEEFACE. Ixxxvii this volume was sent to the press, Mr. Martin, whose translations of Horace and Catullus have been so much admired, has kindly presented me with a volume printed for private circulation, which contains large extracts from ' Faust,' some of which had previously appeared in ' Eraser's Maga- zine.' It is a gratifying thing to find this accom- plished writer thus resisting the prose heresy, which had indeed been fully refuted by my friend, the translator of Calderon; to whom I have to acknowledge a special debt of kindness — a version of Schlegel's Arion, printed in the notes to this drama. In Allegorical representations the dress of the characters is no inconsiderable part of the Alle- gory. The dress of the mask, to which the name of Poetry is given in the First Act, is that of the Apollo Musagetes ; and this is the costume of Schlegel's minstrel in the Arion. Wishing to give this from Schlegel, I asked Mr. Mac-Carthy whether the poem had been translated, and in reply he sent me, what I feel to be a great orna- ment to my book — a translation by himself of the poem. FAUSTUS. ACT I. A Pleasing Landscape. Faustus, li/ing on a flowery grass-plot, weary, restless, striving to sleep. Twilight — Spirits flit, hovering about — beautiful little forms. Abiel. (Song, accompanied by ^olian harps.) In the spring, soft showers of blossoms Sink down over all the earth; And the green fields — a wide blessing — Smile for aU of mortal birth. And the generous little Fairies Haste to telp whom help they may. Is he good ? or is he evil ? What know they? or what care they ? He is man — he is unhappy ; And they help whom help they may. 2 FATJSTUS. {Addresses the Faieies.) Ye, round this head who sweep in airy rings, Here, generous, gentle spirits, noble Elves, In your true nature manifest yourselves. Make soft the heart — assuage its savage strife ; Chase back remorse — repel his burning stings ; Cleanse from the thoughts foul bygone wreck of life. Four are the pauses of the lingering night — To speed and charm them be it your delight. • First in cool pillows let his head sink deep; Then bathe him in the dew of Lethe's stream. Soon, his cramped limbs relaxing them, sweet sleep Comes strengthening him to meet the morning's beam. Then, brightest proof of fairy might, And, kindest boon of fairy wight, Give him back to holy light ! Choeus of Faieies, at first singly ; then two, and more, alternately and together. When the twilight mists of evening Darken the encircling green, Breezes come with balmy fragrance — Clouds sink down with dusky screen ; And the heart — sweet whispers soothe it Eocked to infant-like repose ; And the eyes of the o'er-wearied Feel the gates of daylight close. FAUSTUS. 3 Night hath now sunk down — and rising Star comes close on holy star ; Sovereign splendours^tiny twinklers — ■ Sparkle near and shine from far : Sparkle from the glassy waters — Shine high up in the clear night ; While, of peace the seal and symbol, Eeigns the full moon's queenly light. On have flown the hours— and sorrows Vanish ; nor can joy abide. Feel through sleep the sense of healing ! In the purpling dawn confide ! Green vales brightening — hiUs out-swelling ; Flowering copses — budding tree — In the young corn's silver wavelets Bends the harvest soon to be. Wake to Hope, and Hope's fulfilment ; In the sunrise see the day! Thin the filmy bands that fold thee: Fling the husk of sleep away ! Dare — determine — act. The many Waver. Be not thou as these. All things are the noble spirit's Clear to see, and quick to seize. [_An exceedingly loud noise announces sunrise. b2 FAUSTU8. Ariel. Hearken! hart! the storm of sunrise — Sounding but to Spirits' ears — As the Hours fling wide the portals Of the East, and Day appears. How the rock-gates, as the chariot Of the sun bursts through, rebound I Roll of drum, and wrath of trumpet. Crashing, clashing, flashing round; Unimaginable splendour — Unimaginable sound! Light is come ; and in the tumult, Sight is deadened-.— Hearing drowned. In the bells of flowerets hide, Or beneath the green leaves glide; Deeper, deeper in the rock, Shrink ye from the deafening shock! [Fairies disappear. Faustus {alone). Life's pulses reawakening leap anew, The gentle twilight of the dawn to greet; And thou, oh Earth! — for nature still is true — Didst, this night, of the common boon partake ; And, breathing in fresh vigour at my feet, Already, with thy charms of new delight. PAUSTUS. 5 Dost in my heart the earnest wish awake To strive towards Being's unascended height. Half seen, half hid, in twilight gleams the world ; The dawning woodland rings with ceaseless sound, — Life's thousand voices : rapture infinite ; And, to and fro the valley, mist-wreaths curled Gush in loose streaks ; — yet downward pierces deep Heaven's brightness. From the vaporous gulf pro- found Start boughs and branches, disenthralled from sleep; And sparks of colour leap up from the ground In trembling flower and leaflet dew-impearled. A paradise is everywhere around. Look up ! 0' th' mountains, how each giant height Reveals the unrisen sun with solemn glow : They are the first to enjoy the eternal light That later will to us its way have found. Now, on the green-sunk Alpine meadows low The dawn-streaks a distincter radiance shed ; And, downward speeding still in gradual flow, The wide illumination here is spread. Forth comes the sun — insufierably bright. I shrink with wounded eyes — I cower as from a blow ! Thus, too, it is, when yearning Hope hath striven Trustfully toward the Highest, and at last 6 FAUSTUS. Finds open flung Fulfilment's portal wings ; But then o'er-powering burst— we stand aghast — Flames rushing from those deep eternal springs : Life's torch we would have lit with light from heaven, A fire-sea whirls about us— and what fire I Is 't Love ? is 't Hate ? that glowing round us clings— With pain and joy, and passion and desire- So that again we would our eyes depress To earth ; again would hide us in the veil Of childhood — unforeseeing, passionless. Behind me, then, let burn the sun's fierce blaze! Where roars the Cataract thro' the rent rock I gaze — delight increasing as I gaze ; From fall to fall, in thousand thousand Streams, He leaps — down plunges he with thunder-shock — Whirls, rushes, raves — mad foam on foam uptost ; But, see! where springs — glad bud of this wild storm — A tranquil presence thro' the Storm that gleams. The heaven-illumined Eainbow's glorious form ; Distinctly now limned out, and now it seems To flow away, in airy atoms lost. Spreading around a cool and fragrant Shower. Man's strivings, are they not the torrent's strife ? Think, and yet more you feel the emblem's power: The colour, the i-eflected lightj is Life. PAtJSTUS. Y Imperial Palace, Thsokb-Hall. CoxTNCiL OF State. Trumpets. Cotjetiehs of every rank, splendidly dressed, en(er. The Kaisbe ascends the throne, on his right the astbolqgeb. Kaiseb. Tetistt and well-beloved, from far and near Assembled, I am glad to meet jou here. I see the Wise Man at my side ; but where 's ' The Fool? •.,... y Junker. He stumbled as he climbed the stairs ; He trod too close upon the spreading train Of the robe, and tripped. They bore him off amain; But whether dead or drunk, who knows or cares ? Second JuNBaiE. And lo ! preferment comes apace. Another 's pushing for the place; Tricked out in so superb a trim, That every eye is fixed on him. The palace guards would stop him fain, And cross their halberds : all in vain. See where he has got, fool-hardy fool ! 8 PAUSTUS. Enter Mephistopheles drest as Court fool ; he kneels at the foot of the throne. Mephistopheles. That which men execrate, yet welcome to them ; Long for, and yet would from their presence chase it; Protect, and yet they say it will undo them ; Declaim against, deride, and still embrace it ? He, whom you may not call to your assistance. Yet smile when any have to him alluded ; What from thy throne now stands at no great distance — What from this circle hath itself excluded? Kaisek {to Mephistopheles). Enough ! your riddles here are out of place. These gentlemen,* in their own, have a hard case To deal with ; solve it for us if you can. I should be too well pleased to have the man Who could do that. My qld Fool 's gone, I fear, To the . Take his place at my side : stand here. [Mephistopheles steps up and places himself at the Kaiser's left. Mdrmurs op the Crowd. A new fool! . . . I like old things best. Sow came he in ? . . . What interest ? Struck down at once. . . . How he did sip ! That was a tub. . . . And this a chip. * The principal officers of state — members of the Council. FAUSTUS, 9 Kaiser. Welcome, my well-beloved, from near and far. Convened beneath this favourable star. Who reads the heavens sees in the horoscope Prosperity there written — Welfare, Hope. Why, at such time when we would drown all cares But of decorum beards and masquing dress — When we would feast upon our happiness — This Council about plaguy state affairs ? Tet if it can 't but be so^ — and you see it Fit that it should so be — why then so be it ! , [TAe Council being thus formally opened by the Kaiseb, the Chancellor, who is also Arch- bishop, makes his Report on the general state of the Empire. His Report is followed by similar statements from the other High Functionaries. Chancellor. Justice, man's highest virtue, loves to shed Its saintly halo-wreath round Cesar's head. Inviolable Justice — the demand Of all, the absence of which all deplore — 'T is his to minister and to protect. But what avails high reach of intellect. Goodness of heart, or willingness of hand, Where evil hatches evil evermore. And a mad fever rages through the land? 10 FAUSTUS. Down from this height look on the reabn : 't would seem That you are struggling in a powerless dream, Where monstrous things o'er monstrous things bear sway, And misrule is the order of the day, And lawlessness is law — the one law men obey. One from your homestead sweeps off steed or steer, Or carries away a woman, or a pix From the altar — chalice, cross, or candlesticks — And boasts of his exploits for many a year : Skin safe and sound — and wherefore should he fear? Appellants crowd the justice-hall — The proud judge sits on his high pillows ; Meanwhile rave on with savage squall The uproar's swelling billows. And glorying in his shame stands forth the criminal. His crime protects him. He comes aided by Accomplices on whom he can rely. ' GtriLTT,' the sure award, when Innocence Is all a man can plead in his defence. The world 's disjointed all ; decency quite Extinct. How can the feeling, in man's breast, That leads him to discern and love the right. Live as a thought, or be in act expressed ? Men, whom as meaning well we may describe, To flattery yield, or to some coarser bribe. PATISTtJS. 1 1 The judge, who cannot punish, will in time Connive at, nay, participate in crime. These are dark colours, would that I could draw A thick gauze o'er such picture ! {pause.) Measures strong Must be adopted ; it brooks no delay : When every man fears wrong, and lives by wrong, The prince dishonoured suffers more than they. Heekmeistee. How they do rave and rage in these wild days! Everyone, everywhere — madness outright. Command— aye, say command— when none obeys. The burgher, safe within his walls — the knight. Perched on his rocky nest, stand there defying All we can do — on their own strength relying. The hireling, for his pay, makes blustering claim. They're with us yet; but were the debt Once paid, 't is little that we 'd see of them. Enforce, where all resist it, a command! 'T were into a wasp's nest to thrust your hand. The kingdom, which they should protect. Look at it — devastated, plundered, wrecked ! We cannot pay them; and we must permit Violence, rapine, wrong. All suffer it. The Empire ! What 's the Empire ? Half the lands Utterly lost to us— in rebel hands. ] 2 FAUSTUS. And foreign princes, not one of them cares For it or us : 'tis our concern, not theirs. Teeasueee. Who on Allies can reckon ? The supplies, That were to have come in from our allies, — Pipewater, when the conduit pipes are cut ! And, in your realm, is Property secure ? Go where one wiU, 't is a new man keeps house; One who would seem to have no object but To hold his own, and with no thanks to us. We must look on, and helplessly endure ! So many flowers of our prerogative We have given away, scarce one remains to give ; And Parties — as they call them — ^little weight, Now-a-days, place I on their love or hate. Parties ? where are they ? — Ghibelline or Guelph ? Combine ? combine! where each thinks but of self. They scrape, they screw, and what they get they guard — Our chests left empty, every gold-gate barred. Maeshal. And what distress must I, too, bear? Every day striving still to spare ; My eflPorts to retrench attended With this result — that more 's expended. The cooks, they want for nothing: wild boars, bucks. Does, hares, and hens and turkeys, geese and ducks. Duty-rents paid in kind, we still can dine. But what in the wide world to do for wine ? FAUBTtrS. 13 'T is all out, how supply it — there 'a the rub. 'T is not so long ago since, tub on tub, It lay piled in the cellars — tun on tun, Of the best vintage-years, and th^ best run Of the best hill-slopes. Now, what with the drain Of the nobles on it, who will never stop Their swiUing, I'm not left a single drop: And the town-council, too, has tapped its store. This too the nobles swill, and brawl for more ; They snatch at wine-cups — seize no matter what Comes first to hand — drain goblet, pan, and pot. Till under the broad table, bowl and beast Fall mixed with broken relics of the feast. I ! — I must pay for all, provide for all. The Jew ! for me his pity is but small. He his anticipation-bond prepares Swallowing the years to come : he never spares. The pigs — plague take them! — never come to brawn. The very pillow on the bed 's in pawn. The loaves upon the table still to pay; To-morrow's bread-stuff eaten yesterday ! Kaiser (after some reflection, to Mephistopheles) . And, Fool, have you no grievance to propound ? Mephistopheles. I ? — None. Upon this splendour to look round — With thee and thine and all this grand array 14 FAUSTUS. Around us ! — Must not confidence arise ? — "With such a prince, so ruling such a land; With such a host, that so the foe defies ; With such intelligence at your command ; With such activity of enterprise-^ Can any powers malevolent unite For darkness where these stars are shedding light? MnKMUES. The rascal 's quick. . . . Aye, vp to trick — Liar, romancer. . . . When lies answer: Be sure there 's something in the wind ; . . . Aye, something always lurks behind. . . . To me 'twould seem a settled scheme. Mbphistopheles. Search the world round, and is there to be found On earth one quiet corner that has not A something wanting, which, are we unable To come at it, makes life uncomfortable ? This man wants that thing, and that man wants this. Here, our want is hard cash ; and hard cash is, When men most want it, cash hard to be got. 'T is not a thing that from the streets you sweep ; It lies deep down, but Science lifts the deep. In mountain veins — in walls — and underground — Much gold in coins, or uncoined, may be found ; And, if you ask who brings this gold to light ? — ' The gifted man, ruling the Infinite Of Nature, mighty in the Spirit's might. FAUSTUS. 15 Chancellor. Nature and Spirit! Words that, in my mind, No Christian man should utter ; 't is for this That we burn atheists. Speeches of the kind Are highly dangeroxts. Nature! aye — that is Sin ; Spirit — that means Devil ; — and Devil and Sin— A pretty pair they are! — true kith and kin — Having a natural fancy for each other, Have gendered what tte world at once should smother — The mis-shaped miserable monster Doubt — Sexless, or double-sexed. In the wide borders Of the old Empire, two — and but two orders To speak of — have risen up to guard the throne : The Spieitualtt and the Eittbrs ; and they form A sure protection against every storm, And for their pay make Church and State their own. Plebeian arrogance and self-willed spite Lead some mad spirits to contest the right ; Dealers with fiends they are, and heretics : Country and town infesting and destroying. And these this jester, with his fool-born tricks, Which you are unsuspiciously enjoying, Is now to tbis high circle smuggling in. J6 FATJSTTJS. To cling to reprobates itself is sin: The scorners and court-fool are close akin. Mbphistopheles. There spoke the veriest bigot of book-learning. What you discern not, sir, there 's no discerning : All, that you touch not, stands at hopeless distance ; AU, that you grasp not, can have no existence; All, that eludes your weights, is base and light; That, which you count not, is not counted right ; All measurement is false, but where you mete; All coin without your stamp is counterfeit. Kaiseb. These wise saws will not make our suffering less ; What mean you by this lengthened Lent-address ? I'm weary of this endless 'if and 'how;' Get me the money— that's what we want now. Mephistopheles. Aye, all you want, and more ; 't is easy, yet The Easy 's difficult enough to get. There 's plenty of it— plenty — not a doubt of it In the' heart of the' earth, but how to get it out of it? Think of the old days, when invading bands Came like a deluge, swamping men and lands ; How natural it was that many should Hide their best valuables where they could. FAtrSTUS. 17 'T was so in times of the old Boman sway : So yesterday — and so it is to-day ; — And all lies dead and buried in the soil. The soil is Caesar's — his the splendid spoil. Teeastieer. Not bad for a fool. It stands to reason quite : The soil is doubtless the old emperor's right. Chancelloe. His golden meshes Satan spreads, I fear; And something more than good is busy here. Marshal. If what we want at court he 'd only give, I 'd hazard th' other place in this to live. Heeemeistee. The fool 's the man for us all. The soldier 's dumb : He takes his dollars — asks not whence they come. Mephistopheles. And if, perhaps, you fancy me a rogue. Why not take counsel of the Astrologue ? There stands he — Truth itself ; — reads what Heaven writes Distinctly in the planetary lights — Cycle encircling cycle, Hour and House — And what he sees in Heaven will say to us. C 18 FAUSTUS. MUEMUES OF THE CkOWD. Rascals a pair ! — they understand — And play into each other's hand — Phantast and Fool. Easily known Why they two so beset the throne. Aye, the old song — so often sung — The fool suggests — the wise gives tongue. AsteOlogeb speaks, Mephistopheles prompts. The Sun himself is gold without alloy; Swift Meecuet, still at his sly employ, For friends that pay speeds messages of joy. Venus, with every man of you in love, Early and late, keeps twinkling from above. Coy Luna 's whimsical ; and Maes, belike, With red glare threatens, but delays to strike ; And JupiTBE is still the brightest star. Dim glooms the mass of Satuen from afar : Small to the eye, and small our estimate Gf him in value, vast as is his weight. The world is cheered, when, in conjunction shines, Luna with Soi, — with silver, gold combines. Anything else one wishes for or seeks Park, p3.1ace, pretty bosom, rosy cheeks- Follows of course. This highly-learned man Makes or procures it — what none else here can. Kaisee. A second voice upon my ear, That doubles every sentence, rings— FAUSTUS. 19 The matter yet is far from clear, And nothing like conviction brings. MUEMUES. What '* that to us? ... What wretched fuss — Chemist and quack . . . Old almanack. I 've heard it oft ... I was too soft ; And should it come — Ti's all a hum. Mephistopheles. Here stand they, all amazement! staring round At the high discovery; give no credit to' it. One has his story of a strange black hound; One a blind legend of a mandrake root. Aye, let them laugh, or try to laugh it off; Say 'tis a juggle — tricks of knaves or witches; Yet, — all the sooner for their sneer and scoffi — Odd sudden tinglings come; limbs shake; foot itches. One of Nature's never-ending Secret wonders here you find ; From the lowest rings ascending, Living traces upward wind. When and where, all over twitching, Every limb feels sudden seizure. Then and there keep digging, ditching: There 's the fiddler — there the treasure ! * * See Note. c2 20 FATTSTUS. MUEMTTRS. My foot — / cannot move about ,• My arm is cramped . . .'Tis only gout; And my big toe, it pains me so. , From all these signs, my mind divines That here the treasure is. Kaiser. Come, no delay ! Escape for you is none. This very day Shall bring these froth-lies of yours to the test. Show us these chambers where these treasures rest. I '11 throw down sword and sceptre of command, And labour with my own imperial hand; Work heart and hand at the great enterprise: 3ut if all you are uttering be but lies — As I do fear — I 'U send you straight to hell. Mephistopheles (aside). Broad is the way from this, as I know well. {Aloud) I have not words enough truly to tell Of all the treasure everywhere that lies : None claiming it — none knowing of such prize. The peasant with his plough who scrapes the sod, Sees a gold crock beneath the upturned clod, Crusted and clammy — blesses his good luck In having on a lump of nitre struck; And, with delight and terror manifold. PACSTUS. 21 Feels in his meagre hand, that scarce can hold The treasure, rouleaus of gold — actual gold, Down to what clefts — through what drear passages Must he who knows of hidden treasure press On the verge of the under-world ! What vaults to be Blown up ! — what cellars, well secured: the sun For ages has not seen them open thrown ! There golden salvers, goblets, beakers fair — All for the sage — and ruby cups are there. And, should he wish to use them — plenty of Good old wine, too — I warrant you true stuff. And you may credit me — I know it well — The wood casks all are dust ; and, strange to tell The wine makes new ones of its own old crust. And such wine — 't is not only gems and gold, But the essential spirit of noblest wine That night and horrors here imprisoned hold. Here doth the Sage his search untired pursue. Day has no light whereby deep truths to see. In Darkness is the home of Mystery. Kaiseb. Darkness and Mystery I leave to thee . What 's good for any thing will dare the day. At night your rascal can sculk out of view — When every cow is black and all cats grey. Handle the plough, then ; and let us behold Tour share turn up these pans and pots of gold. 22 FAUSTUS. M EPHISTOPHELE S, Take spade and hoe yourself. Throw off all state : The labour of the peasant 't is makes great. A herd of golden calves* shall from the soil Start up — of earnest will and ardent toil Instant reward! Enraptured then you may Adorn yoarself — adorn your lady gay. Jewels in the imperial diadem Add splendour to the monarch ; the rich gem Makes beauty lovelier in the coloured play Of light. • EIaiser {impatiently). Quick! quick ! how long, how long, will you delay? AsTHOLOGEE (Mephistopheles prompting). Sire ! moderate this fervour of desire. Best now the merry masquerade to act. And end it. Double purposes distract. Then thro' the Above, in self-communion learn. The Under to deserve, and so to earn. Who seeks for goodness, should himself be good; For cheerfulness, should calm his fevered blood. Tread hard the ripe grapes, if thy wish be wine ; If miracles, increasing faith be thine ! * See Note, FAUSTUS. 23 Kaisee. Well, then ! Ash Wednesday will, I trust, uphold The promises you 're giving me of gold. I never did so long for Lent. The Astrologer's advice is, after all. The best; and so in merriment Let the interval be spent. We '11 have our ball, whate'er befall, And a gay time of carnival. [ Trumpets.— Exeunt. Mephistopheles {to the Audience). You never can get fools to understand How luck and merit still go hand in hand : Your born fool never yet was Fortune's prize- man. The stone of the philosopher. In such hands, no great treasure were — The wise man's talisman minus the wise man. 24 FAUSTUS, MASQUERADE. A spacious Hall, with Side-chambers adorned and prepared for a Masquerade. Characters Introduced. — Gaeden-giels, Gar- dener, Mother and Dattghtek, Wood- cdttees, &c. pulchinelloes, parasites, Drunkard, Satirical Poet, The Graces, The Fates, The Furies, Hope, Fear, Prudence, Zoilo-Thersitbs, Knabe LenkerJ Plutus, Starveling, Women, Fauns, Satyrs, Gnomes, Giants, Ntmphs, Pan. Enter Herald. Herald. Fancy not that our scene is laid. Or that to-night our play is played. In the drear bounds of German grounds — Of dead men's dances, devilry — Court fools and Gothic revelry : Ours is a cheerful masquerade. Feel yourselves now in an Italian home ; And that the Kaiser, on his way to Borne, For his advantage, and for your delight. Hath crossed the high Alps, and is lord to-day Of a new kingdom, beautiful and gay ; Having already in himself full might, FAUSTUS. 25 Has sued the holy slipper for full right ; Come for himself a briUiant crown to gain The cap and bells have followed in his train. And we are all born as it were again ; Put on the cap of foUy, and are in it Such paragons of wisdom for the minute. A clever fellow's comfortable plan Is, 'draw it cosily o'er head and ears, And play the fool as little as you can.' A prudent course ; the world in a few years Is pretty sure of teaching any man. They come in troops, they form in groups. And into knots the masses sever, And in and out they move about, And out and in again they range. For ever changing, yet no change. Its hundred thousand fooleries. The world 's the world ? 'T was— 't wiU be— 't is The World — the same one Fool for ever. Enter Gaeden-gikls, some adorned with artificial flowers ; some with bouquets in their hands. GARDEN-aiKLS. (SoN(i, accompanied by mandolins.) We, to-night, to win your favour. Trick us out in masquerade ; Young girls, that our way from Florence With the German court have made. 26 FAIJSTUS. O'er our dusky tresses glisten Roses from no common bowers ; Threads of silk, and silken laces, Shape we into mimic flowers. Ours is sure a happy service : Waking at our touch appear Buds that have no fear of winter — Flowers that blossom through the year. Divers-coloured shreds arranging, Hue and hue symmetrical ; Worthless each, yet, thus united, Feel you not the charm of all. Garden-girls, with neatness dress we, Ornamentally in part ; Woman's love of graceful Nature Blends so gracefully with Art. Herald (to the G-arden-girls). Let us see the laden baskets, Balanced on your heads that rest ; Show the fair flowers — bud and blossom — Each select what suits him best. Let a garden, as by magic, Walks and arbours, meet the eyes : Crowds will throng round the fair merchants. And the lovely merchandise. * PAU8TUS. 27 Gabden-girls. 'T is a pleasant mart. No higgling, No dispute for prices here; In a few short words expressive, What each o£Eers will appear. Olive-branch (with fruit). I no flower its blossoms envy; I with none will have dispute ; Peaceful, and of peace the emblem. Marrow of the land my fruit. Oh ! that, this day, it were mine The brightest, fairest brow to twine. Wheat -MTREATH {golden). Gifts of Ceres form my chaplet. Brown with the maturing sun. Crown of Life ! be still the Useful And the Ornamental one. Fancy Chaflet. Flowers of mosses, many-coloured. Mimics of the mallow grey — Nothing half so bright in nature — Are the fashion of the day. Fancy Bouquet. These — their family and tribe — No Theophrastus could describe : 28 FAUSTUS. Some have little love for these, But there are whom they will please. Flowers to beauty dedicated, Chaplets through the tresses plaited ; Or delightedly that rest Near the fond heart, on the soft breast. Challenge.* Let your motley fancies blossom In the fashion of the hour ; In strange guise be shaped and moulded. Be they such as Nature never, In her wildest freaks, unfolded — Green stalks — bells of golden glimmer From the flowing tresses shimmer; But we EOSE-BtTDS.* Love to lurk unseen. Happy finder ! he for whom We a sweet surprise have been. Breathing fresh in dewy bloom. When the summer comes again — And the rose-bud kindles then Into blushes — who of men But must yield him to the charm? Can of love his heart disarm? * See Note. • f PAUSTUS. 29 Lovely flower! and love's own emblem! Timid promise — rich revealing! Kose"! Of ail in Flora's kingdom Dear to eye, and heart, and feeling ! [ The Gaeden-gibls arrange their goods under the green leafy walks. Gardeneh enters with Garden-bots, who .arrange themselves as a Chorus. Gardener. (Song, accompanied hy Theorbos.) Flowers! my lady's brow entwining ; Pretty things in show and shining ! Fruits — in them no false decoying — Are the true stuff for enjoying. Buy them ! try them ! Plums, pears, cherries. Show their brown and honest faces ; Tongue and palate, better judges Than the eye, to try such cases. Come ! my ripe fruit 's a true treasure ; Here to feast is actual pleasure : Eose-buds speak to the ideal ; Bite the fruit — the taste is real. ( To the Garden-gipls.) Yours the pride of glowing flowers, And the wealth of autumn ours ; For our mutual delight — What say you, if we unite ? 30 FACSTUS. Into this enchanted garden Come ye, each his fancy suit; Bowers are here, and walks and windings ; Bud and leaves, and flowers and fruit. '[Amid alternate song, accompanied with guitars and theorbos, both choruses proceed to arrange their goods so as to set tKem off to advantage. Enter Mother and Daitghtee. Mother. When first I saw the infant smiles, Dearest of living creatures. On thy small face, with hood and lace I decked those haby features. And fancied all thy future pride, The richest winning as his bride The fairest of all creatures. Many a day has passed away; My own dear child — Heaven love it — And wooers came and wooers went ; And little good came of it. 'T was all the same with every wile, The merry dance, the sly soft smile, Time lost, with little profit. FAUSTUS. 31 Was never ball or festival But you -were in the dances; Round games, or forfeits — all in vain ; Away the luck still glances. Spread wide your nets again to-day — The fools are out : who knows what may Turn up in this day's chances ? [[Girls, playfellows young, and beautiful, enter and join in loud confidential chatting. Fishermen and BiKDCATCHEKS now enter with nets, lines, and limed twigs and other tackle, and join the group of girls. Alternate attempts to win, catch, escape, and hold fast, give opportunity for most agreeable dialogues. Enter Wood-cutters, Charcoal-burners, S/c, violently and roughly. Woodcutters. Boom ! make room! we want and crave it ; Want but room — 'and we must have it. Trees we fell — down come they crashing; Bear them with us — crushing, smashing. What we wish, is to impress on All and each the true old lesson — If the coarse and clumsy hand Kept not working in the land ; 32 FAUSTUS. If there were not such as we are, Could the world have such as ye are ? Ye are the chosen ; Yet do not forget it, That ye would be frozen, If we had not sweated. Enter Pulchinelloes and Parasites. PtTLCHiNELLOES {stupidly, almost like fools). Ye are the born fools, Toiling and trudging ; Nature hath made you "With bent back, for drudging. We are the clever : Nothing whatever, That you call lumber. Our backs to encumber. ' All our pleasure, Easy leisure ; All our traps, Flaps and caps : * Hose and jackets, and such tight wear — No great burthen is such light ware ; Slim foot, then, in thin pantoufle, Through the court we shift and shuffle. We are met in market-places. Painted masks upon our faces. FAUSTUS. 33 At street corners we stand gaping— There, like cocks, keep flapping, clapping Wings as 't were ; and, thus set going, Take to clattering and crowing — Together three or four of us Will step aside — like eels we glide — And nobody sees more of us. Till, by and bye, up starts a brother, And we crow out to one another. Praise us, blame us — try to shame us — What care we? .Ye cannot tame us. Paeasitjes {flattering and fawning on the Woodcuttees, Chaecoal-buenees, ^c). Porters ! there are no men truer — Charcoal-burner ! and wood-hewer! After all, there are but few men Do the world's work like these true men. Where were bowing, suing,' smiling ; Blowing hot and «old ; beguiling Words and watching looks ; and nodding Sly assent, but for their plodding? Fire from heaven comes unexpected — Providentially directed — To the kitchen hearth ; but is it Better for the sudden visit? 34 FAUSTTTS. If no faggots had be&n placed there, Would not fire have gone to waste there? And the faggots' blaze would dwindle, If there were no eoals to kindle ; But, with them, comes bubbling, boiling, Eoasting, toasting, baking, broiling. And the man of true taste, With instincts esthetic, Scents roast meat, smells paste, And of fish is prophetic. He smiles in the pantry — He shines at the table. Performer — ^none warmer, More active, more able t Enter A Dkunken Man {scarce conscious). Drunken Man. Everything is right and merry When in wine our cares we bury. Cheery hearts, 't is we that bring them ! Cheery songs, 't is we that sing them ! Drink, boys, drink ; and still be drinking—. Clashing glasses, drinking, clinking. See, behind, that fellow blinking ! PFhy decline, boys ? Drink your wine, boys ! Come, and clash your glass with mine, boys ! ( These lines repeated by Choeus.) If my wife, with rout and racket. Scoff at my embroidered jacket — FAUSTUS. 35 Call me mummer, masquerader, I '11 show fight to the invader. Spite of her — amid the clinking Clashing glasses— I '11 keep drinking. Of good wine bad wives are jealous : Keep the women off, young fellows 1 Maskers, mummers — take your wine, boys ! Clash your glass, as I clash mine, boys ! Clash your glass; keep up the fun, boys ! Till the work of life is done, boys ! ( Chorus.) Of our host I 'm still the debtor : Plan of life I know no better. Looks he sulkily, my boast is Of my credit with the hostess. Does the landlady run rusty, Still the maid is true and trusty : She 's my sure and safe sheet-anchor; And, when all else fail, my banker. So I drink, and still keep drinking; With the glasses clashing, clinking. Clash your glasses, each, my fine boys! Clear them off, as I clear mine, boys! {Chorus.') I 'U stay where I am at present ; No place else can be more pleasant. Let me lie where I am lying; I can not stand, no use in trying. d2 36 FAUSTUS. A new toast ! Let all keep drinkiDg ! Brothers all, their glasses clinking. Drink away, like men of mettle ; Hold to chairsj and cling to settle. Sit up each who still is able, Or lie snug beneath the table. Come, my fine boys — drink your wine, boys ! Every drop, as I drink mine, boys ! ( Chorus.') [Herald announces different poets, court and ritter singers, tender and enthusiastic. In the pressure of rival poets, none will let another be heard. One sneaks by, and contrives to say a few words. Satirist. In my character of Poet How my spirits it would cheer, Dared I say or sing a something Nobody would wish to hear. [ The Night and Churchyard poets send apologies, as they are engaged in an interesting conversation with a newly-arisen vampire, from which they anticipate the developement of a new school of poetry. The Herald is compelled to admit their excuse, and calls up the Greek Mythology which, though in modern masks, loses neither character nor charms. , FAUSTUS. S7 Enter The Graces. Aglaia. The charm of manners we bid live In life. With graceful kindness give. Hegemone. And gracefuUy be still received The granted wish — the want relieved. EUPHEOSTNE. And graceful be the tone subdued, And homefelt charm of Gratitude. Enter The PAEca:, Ateopos. I, the eldest, am invited At this festival to spin — Much for you and me to think of In this tender life-thread thin. That the threads be soft and pliant. Must the flax be sifted fine ; And, that they flow smooth and even, Fingers skilled must press the twine. Jf, at revels or at dances. Blood beats high ; oh! then let wake Caution. Think how short the measure : Think that the frail thread may break. 38 FAtJSTUS. Clotho. Be it known, to me the scissors, In these last days, they confide : By the late Administration, None were pleased or edified. Husky yarns the duU old woman Left to drawl a weary time ; Clearest threads, of brilliant promise, She cut off in youthful prime. Of impatient inexperience. That might make me go astray, Danger now is none. My scissors, In the sheath remain to-day. Glad am I that, thus ntadg powerless, I can smile on all I see ; That, all apprehension banished, You may dance and revel free. Lachesis. Happy maintenance of order To the sagest was decreed: Mine the wheel that ceases never. Circling still with equal speed. FAtfSTUS. 39 Threads flow hither, threads flow thither, And their course my fingers guide : None must overpass the circle — Each must in its place abide. I — should I a moment slumber — Tremble for the fate of men : Hours are numbered, years are measured, And the weaver's time comes then. Enter The FusiES. Heeald. Had you an eye as keen as an inquisitor's, Or were you ever so deep read in books, You 'd never guess who these are by their looks, But fancy them every-day morning visitors. These are the Furies. None would think the thing Credible. Pretty, shapely, friendly, young, You scarce can think with what a serpent tongue These doves, all harmless as they look, can sting. They 're wicked; and, no doubt of it, are witty. Could mask their nature ; but, on such gay day — When fools do fool — they have no secret : they Boast themselves plagues of country and of city. 40 PAUSTUS. Albcto. No help for it ; you cannot but believe us, For we are pretty, young, fond, flattering kittens. Is any here in love ? "We '11 find admittance To that man's heart and home : he must receive us. We '11 court and coax him ; say to him all that would be Damning ; say how she winked at this or that — Is dull — is crook-backed — limps — is lean— is fat; Or, if betrothed, no better than she should be. And we it is can deal with the fiancee ; Tell her what he said of her weeks ago. In confidence, to Madame So-and-so. They 're reconciled : the scars remain, I fancy. Megmua.. This is mere child's play. Let them once have married, I take it up ; turn, with pretences flimsy. Honey to gall, helped out by spleen or whimsey. Or jest, at some rash moment too far carried. Man, when what once was dearest he possesses. Will feign or fancy soon a something dearer ; Fly charms that pall, seen oftener and seen nearer ; Fly warm love, seek some chill heart's dead caresses. FAtlSTUS. 41 I at manoeuvre-ing am shrewd and supple. I, and friend Asmodaeus, who apace Sows tares, destroying thus the human race One by one, — rather couple, say, by couple. TiSIPHONB. I than words have darker engines — Poison — daggers — for the traitor. Mixed and sharpened ! Sooner, later. Life — thy life — shall glut my vengeance. Sweetest hopes that love can offer Changed to keen embittered feeling ; With such wretch there is no dealing: He hath sinned, and he must suffer. Let none tell me of forgiving. To the rocks I cry. ' Revenge ' is Their reply. Hark ! he who changes Dies — as sure as I am living. Enter The Group described in the following speech. Herald. Now, may it please you, stand back one and all : Make way for another group ! Those whom I see Differ in character and in degree — Aye, and in kind— from aU the maskers here. See, pressing hitherward, what would appear A mountain : variegated carpets fall Adown its flanks, and it moves on in pride — 42 FAUSTUS. A head, with large long teeth, and serpentine Proboscis wreathed. Their secret they would hide ; But it will open to this key of mine. A graceful lady, sitting on the neck. Wields a thin wand that mighty bulk to guide, And bend all his brute motions to her will. Archly smiles she, as tho' at her own skill Amused and happy, holding him in check. The other stands high up : a glory there Encircles that grand form — a light divine, Too dazzling for this eye of mine to dare. Two noble women — one at either side — Are chained ; and one is trembling, as in fear, And one moves gracefully with joyous cheer ; And one would break the chain she loathes to wear. One looks, in bondage, as though she were free : Let them, in turn, each tell us who they be. Feab. Mad feast, this ! Drear lamps — dusk tapers — Waving with uncertain glimmer. Oh! this chain! Through smoky vapours. Faces strange around me shimmer. Fools, avaunt ! Peace, idle laughter. Grinning — I distrust your grin : All my enemies are after Me to-night, and hem me in. PAUSTtlS. i know that mask. As I suspected, 'T is an old friend — now my worst foeman : He 'd stab me ; sees himself detected, And steals away, and speaks to no man. To the far-off world, oh ! could I Flee away, how glad I were ; But to this I cling with trembling — . Horror here, and Darkness there. Hope. If the masking of the night, Sisters dear, be a delight ; Yet, be sure to-morrow's coming Will bring with it joy more bright Than your gayest masking, mumming. Oh ! for the uncertain haze Of the torches' glimmering blaze, That the cheerful day-break glow Over all its light would throw ! Then, at our own will, would we, Now in groups, and now alone, Or with one — some dearest one — Roam thro' lawn and meadow free; Best at leisure, roam at pleasure, And in life that knows no care. All things to our will replying. No repulse, and no denying. 44 FAUSTUS. Wander, welcomed everywhere : Doubting not there still must be To be found some region blest — Happy home of all that 's best. Pkudence. Two of men's chief enemies — See you how I curb and chain them — Fbae and Hope. Make way for these : All is safe while I restrain them. With the tower above him swaying, See ! the live Colossus paces, Step by step, my will obeying, Unfatigued, the steepest places. From the battlement, far gleaming. Quivers fast each snowy pinion. As looks round the goddess, deeming All she sees her own dominion. Who can see without admiring ? Light divine around her is — Victory her name — Inspiring Queen of all activities ! Enter Zoilo-Theesites. Zoilo-Theesites. Ho ! ho ! this is the very place for me, To set all right, for you 're all wrong I see. FAUSTUS. 45 What I may think of small game is small matter. See ! the fair lady, up there ; I '11 be at her. Oh ! yes ; be sure it is no other than The dame Victoria. Well, if I 'm a man. She, with the two white wings, cocked up there, thinks Herself an eagle — and that east and west, And north and south, and every point between them. Are hers, — of her wide empire are but links : All things are hers, if she has only seen them; Aye, aye, the lust of empire has its charms. They praise her ; aye, they praise her. I protest That to praise anything sets me in arms. What 's low I would lift up, what 's high make low ; What's crooked I'd make straight; not only so. But make straight crooked. I was, from my birth. One who saw always all things wrong on earth. The round earth! Why should it be round ? Aye, there Matters require reform — ^I 'd have it square. Hekald. Aye, ragged rascal ! thou shalt not escape The good staff's welcome on thy crooked nape. Aye, turn and writhe, and wind and wheel away, And crawling, lick the dust. Begone ! I say. Strange how the fellow, with his broken hump, Whirls on the floor— the round, rough, loathsome lump. 46 FAUSTH9. The porcupine — no bead, or arniB, or leg. How the thing puffs! — 't is very like an egg. Look there ! it swells, it lengthens, bursts asunder; And a twin birth behold ! — a double wonder! — ■ Adder and bat : through dust the one you track, And one up to the roof is flitting black. They 're making their way out to meet again, And reunite — oh ! save me from the twain. [Zoilo-Theesites disappears as described. MUBMURS OP THE CeOWD. ' Up! up! another dance comes on' — ' Not I, indeed: would we were ffone ' Felt you how the spectres breathe From above and from beneath? A thrilling whizzed along the root Of my hair.' — ' It crawled along my foot. But no one 's hurt: ' Well, well— all 's right; But we have had such a fright. All the fun, any way, is ended: This was what the brute intended.' [ The Herald sees a group approaching, which he describes before they are seen by the general company. Herald. Since first I took upon myself the task To play the herald's part, at mime or mask, FAUSTUS. 47 I always watched the doars, that nothing might Find entrance in, that could in any way Disturb, even for a moment, the delight That in a theatre, on holiday. You have in truth a title to expect. I waver not, I yield not, have no fear ; I keep the door well watched and guarded here. But through the window spectres may glide in, From tricks of magic. Even could I detect Such tricks, I have no power to keep you free. I cannot but acknowledge that about The dwarf was something to create grave doubt ; But now in pour the spectres, in full stream, Eesistless. Who each figure is, and what The characters assumed are, it would seem The herald's fitting duty to explain. But here to try would be an efibrt vain : I cannot tell you, for I know it not. Here there is mystery beyond my reach. Here you must help me; here, you, too, must teach. See you a roll and rustling through the crowd? A gallant team of four — a splendid car — Sweeps swiftly hitherward. It glitters far. It doth not part the crowd, nor doth there seem Tumult or pressure round that glorious team. In coloured light on moves it far and fast. And wandering stars of fire are from it cast, As from a magic lantern. How it speeds 48 FAUSTUS. Hither ! and with the roar of a strong blast. Make way for it ! — I shudder, and [ The car described by the Herald now appears on the stage. Knabe Lenkeb {Boy Charioteer).* Halt, steeds! Stay your wings! stay! and feel the accustomed rein; Restrain yourselves : be still when I restrain ; Rush on when I inspire; respect the ground On which we are ! Look everywhere around ! Circle on circle — how Spectators throng. Up, herald ! up ! and ere we speed along, And are far out of sight, be it your aim To paint and to present us each by name, As suits your office. Allegories be The matters that you trade in — such are we. Heeald. I do not know your name, but I Would venture on description. Lenkee. Try! * See Note. FAUSTUS. 49 Heeaid. First, looking at you, I admit You have youth — and beauty goes with it. 'Twixt man and boy; the fair beholder Thinks you '11 look better, too, when older. You seem to me one, upon whom to gaze May give them danger in the future days A dear deceiver from your very birth. Leiteeb. Prettily said. Go on ; make it appear How far the riddle of this acted mirth Your skill can solve — your comment let us hear. Herald. The eyes' swart fire — the jewelled band that presses With starry glow the midnight of thy tresses — The graceful, shpwy, ornamental gown. That, from the shoulders to the sock falls down In glittering tissue, and the glowing fringe That streams along the sides with purple tinge — Your person from a girl's one scarce would know; But the girls think of it, for weal or woe : They have already given you, it may be, S ome little lessons in the a b c. 50 FAtrsTUS. Lenkee. The splendid figure on the chariot throne ! Give us your notion of who it may be. Herald. The King in every look of his is shown ; And opulent, I guess, and mild is he : Who win his favour they from care are free — May rest them at their ease. His active eyes Spy out their wants, his lavish hand supplies : The liberal hand is more than house or land. Lenker. Your vague description will not help us much. You may improve your sketch with little trouble : Add in another and another touch. ^ Herald. Noble he is ! No words can paint the Noble ! A hale moon face, full mouth, and cheeks that glow Under the diamonded turban's snow ; A sumptuous robe, that falls with easy flow; And in his gestures, and his graceful mien, The calm of long-accustomed away is seen. Lenker, 'T is Plutus! god of wealth. In happy hour Come on a visit to the Emperor, FAUSTUS. SI In all his pomp and prodigality. I fancy he '11 be very welcome now. Heeald. But of yourself tell us the What and How. Lenkeb. I am Peopusion — ^I am Poest. I am the Poet who feels his true power, And is himself, indeed, but in the hour When he on the regardless world hath thrown, With lavish hand, the wealth, peculiarly his own. And I am rich — am rich immeasurably: Plutus alone in riches equals me. Thro' me his banquets charm, his dances live : That which they could not else have had, I give. Heeald. The bragging tone sits gracefully on you ; But show us something of what you can do. Lenker. I do but snap my fingers'and around The car are sparks and lightning-flashes found. [^ Snaps his fingers. Here goes a string of pearls, and here Are golden clasps for neck and ear ; £2 52 FAUSTUS. Comblet and crown the next snap brings, And gems of price in costliest rings; And flamelets here and there I throw, In the fond hope that some may glow. Herald. How they crowd, and grasp, and snatch at Everything that they can catch at ! They '11 crush his life out. Toy and trinket He flings to them. Only think it — All snatch at them, gem and jewel, As in dreams ; but, oh, how cruel ! As I live 'tis but a juggle. After a poor devil's struggle For a gem — and he has got it — For a ring — and he has caught it— When he thinks he has a treasure. It takes wings at its own pleasure. Pearl-strings snap, the beads are falling Beetles in the hand are crawling. Flung impatiently away, Humming round his head they play. Another clutches for his prize A very swarm of butterflies. That flutter off capriciously; I 'd almost say maliciously. Scamp! to have promised them so much, And put them, off with rubbish such. FAUSTUS. 5g. Lenkeb. The Herald's business is of masks to tell, But not to penetrate below the shell Into the essence. This is not your right Or proper province : it asks sharper sight. From all discussions I would keep me free. Masteb, to thee I turn, and ask of thee (turning to Plutus) — Hast thou not gvr&a, me full dominion o'er The glorious team, the tempest-footed four ? Do I not, at thy will, their motions sway ? Am I not where thy impulse points the way ? Was it not mine to rush on daring wing Triumphantly along the Chariot-ring, And home to thee the palm of victory bring ? And, in War's splendid game, the conqueror's meed When did I seek for thee, and not succeed ? The laurel-wreath, that shines thy brows above, Was it not I with mind and band that wove ? Plutus. Gladly — oh! would that all the world could hear it — Do I proclaim thee spirit of my spirit; To aid my wishes still thy wishes fly; Richer thou art— oh! far more rich than I ! The green bough and thy wreath, I value them More — 't will delight thee — than my diadem. Thou art — let all men know it — my best treasure : Thou art my son, in whom my soul hath pleasure. 54 FAUSTUS. Lenkek (io the crowd). The choicest gifts I have to give — See! I've scattered them around — Are the flamelets fugitive, That for a little moment shed Their fire on this or that one's head ; From one to one away they bound; O'er this brow halo-like they sit, From that in restless brilliance flit: A light loose blaze of flickering gauze That dies before we know it was. Alas ! how seldom will the light. Shed anywhere, rise high or bright ; With many a one burned out before They know — it fades — falls — is no more. Clacking of Women. Look at the crouching rascal on The carriage roof — a charlatan^^ Hans Merryman — poor Jack ; but very Far now looks Merryman from merry. Hunger and thirst have bared his jaw-bones; None ever saw such sorry raw bones. Pinch him ! there 's nothing here to pinch : Skin and bone — if he 's flesh he '11 flinch. TADSTUS, 55 Stabveling.* Off! touch me not, vile womea ! Ye Have never a good word for me. Until my lady was too grand To house-affairs to give a hand ; Too grand to answer every caU, Work hard, and have an eye to all; Things went on well. No room for doubt — All running in and nothing out, I kept the key of chest and strong box: But I am always in the wrong-box. Tou scoffed such poor economist. And called me Lady Stingy-fist. Oh ! yes, I always am to blame, Old screw and skin-flint then my name. But now the woman has grown daring — No thought of stinting or of sparing ; No, nor of paying. Think of paying, With wants increasing — means decaying ! Her good man scarce can walk the streets — In debt to every one he meets. And all that she can filch, she flings Away on dress or junketings. She drinks more wine — aye, too, and better — With the young rascals that beset her. * See Note. 56 FAtTSTUS. New wants are every day arising — Old times are gone. Is it surprising, That thirst for gold, no more your peevish vice Of pinch-gut parsimonious Avarice, Puffs itself out — puts on Man's mask ? In me, Lo ! the new Science of Economy ! EnSTGLEADBE OF THE WoMEN. With dragons let the old, drake grabble; Skin-flint with Flint-skin grin and gabble : Why with them keep up a struggle ? Is not all a lie^a juggle ? The men — were they not bad enough? — Are stung to madness by this stuff. Mass of Women. At him ! At his dragons made of Pasteboard! What are you afraid of ? Nothing here but lie, cheat, trick: Wizard! juggler! heretic! Destined shortly to exhibit ' At the stake, or on the gibbet. Heeald. Peace ! or my staff the coa|gt will clear ; Yet is my help scarce wanting here. See you how, in their wrath, the monsters raise Their scales, and each his double wings displays ? jFAtrsTCS. 67 Their jaws breathe fire, and the crowd flies apace: I thank -the dragons, they have cleared the place. l_Plutus steps from the car. Herald. See ! he descends ; and with what kingly grace He moves — approaching hither. At his beck The dragons rouse, and from the chariot bear The chest with all its gold, and the poor wreck Of man that seems to guard the treasures there. How accomplished, who can tell ? 'T is little less than miracle. Plutus. (to Lenkee). It was a heavy burden. Thou art free : Away to thine own sphere. Away with thee ! Thy place — thy true place — is not here, among A wild, ree-raw, self-willed, tumultuous throng, Together here in mad confusion hurled. There, where the clear eye sees in calm the clear; There, where the good, the beautiful is dear; Where the pure impulse of the heart alone Doth guide thee, and thou art indeed thine own. In solitude : oh ! there create thy world. Lenkeb. Dear to myself as envoy true of thine, I love thee ; for thy nature, too, is mine. 58 FAUSIUS. Fulness is ever where thou dost remain, And where I am men feel it glorious gain ; And many a one will all his life debate — 'To thee, to me, shall he be dedicate ?' Thine may at will lie down and rest. For those Who follow me there never is repose. Nor sleep my acts in secret and in shade : Do I but breathe, my presence is betrayed. Farewell ! I seek the joy you give full fain; But whisper low, and I am here again. [_Dxit as he came. PtUTUS. Now for the imprisoned treasures of the box ! Just with the herald's rod I touch the locks. 'T is open! Look you here : in brazen kettles It boils out — golden streams — and now it settles, And stiffens into chains, crowns, trinkets, rings. And now it bubbles and boils up again : Seizing on, melting, swallowing all the things It had created. Alteknate Cbt op Ceowd. Look ! look there ! how fast 't is going : Bubbling, boiling, over-flowing. Gushing streams of many colours ; Golden cups, and minted dollars ; PAUSTU3. 59 Ducats, ducats following See the monster swallowing ! Now of rouleaus flings a heap up, And I feel my bosom leap up ; Now the cauldron 's boiling over, And the ground all round 't will cover. AU of which we have been dreaming — All for which we have been scheming — 'T is your own — 'tis but to snatch it ; Tours, if only you can catch it. Snatch it ! catch it ! seize the oflfer, While we carry off the coffer I Heeald. The fools! what are they at? What do you mean? Know you not that all this is but a scene In a masquerade? You'respoiled the evening'splay. Think you that men their money give away. And money's worth, so lightly? Counters would. To throw about among you, be too good. Clowns! they imagine that a show, forsooth, Should at the same time be the plain coarse truth. Truth ! why your whole life is a lie. The True — What meaning, rascals, could it have for you ? Up,' thou, thdt mummest thee in Plutus' part — Thou that the hero of our revels art — Sweep the field clear of these scoundrels. 60 FAUSTUS. Plutus. Aye, your wand Will do the ■work : entrust it to my hand. The road — I promise you that this will keep it Clear. See I the wand, into the fire I dip it. Now, then, for it, maskers — ^now of yourselves take care. How it does crackle I — with what lightning glare It flashes out ! And now the wand is lit, And everyone who ventures too near it Will be singed and scorched. I say, take care of your skins : Be warned in time, my circuit now begins. SCEBAM AND CeUSH. * How he does whisk the rod about ! ' ''T is over with us all, no doubt.' 'Back! back! I say.' ' I'll keep my place.' ' The fire-spray Jiashed into my face.' ' Ha ! hut 'f was heavy, — that hot mace.' 'Back, there! back! back, Maskers ! vile pack!' ' Back, stupid rascals ! back, I say !' 'Aye, had I wings to fly away.' Plutus. The circle 's wider now, and all is right ; None singed or scorched, tho' all pushed back in fright : FAtrSTUS. 61 Yet, to secure some order, it were well Bound us to draw a cord invisible. Heeald. You have done wonders ; forced back to the ranks These noisy mutineers : accept my thanks. Plutus. There still is need of patience, noble friend ; Signs many tumults manifold portend. Stabveling. Now, with this charmed ring round me, at my ease I may deal with the ladies as I please. There 's something comic in their forward paces — They always so crowd up to the front places ; Where anything is to be seen worth seeing, At mask or merry-make, they 're sure of being. With eager lips and eyes ; — are young and lusty. The jades — and I 'm not altogether rusty. A pretty girl 's a pretty girl, do you see ? And let me tell you is not lost on me. To-day 't will cost me nothing : I '11 do lover. Words in the crowd can scarce be made intelligible To the quickest ear ; but could we not discover A language of expression much more eligible ? I have been pondering o'er it this some time, And think that I could play a pantomime. 62 FAUSTUS. Gestures — hand — foot— significant shrug of shoul- ders — To reach the eyes of the crowd would scarcely answer ; I 've something else to show, that all beholders Will recognise at once. I'm no romancer. Gold — pliant gold — I *11 mould it. The moist clay Takes any shape — and everywhere makes way. Hekald. What is the fool at ? The lank fool ! can it Be that this hunger-bitten thing has wit ? He is in an odd humour. See ! the gold Under his hand into a paste is rolled. He kneads it — presses it : the red soft ball He shapes, reshapes, leaves shapeless after all. He turns him to the women. At the sight They scream, and, if they could, would take to flight. Disgust is in their glances ; but for ill The rascal is at his devices still. With hita to scoif down decency is quite A matter of amusement and delight. To suffer this in silence were disgrace : Give me the staff to drive him from the place. Plutus. The danger from without he does not see. His mad pranks let him play out at his will ; FATJSTUS. 63 They 'U soon be over, for Necessity, Strong as is Law, than Law is stronger still. [Enter Fauns, SAa?TES, Gnomes, Nymphs, ^c, attendants on Pan, and announcing his ap- proach. Tumult and Song. The savage host comes suddenly From wooded vale, from mountain high — Worshipping their mighty Pan — With a resistless cry ! They know that which to none but them is known : Straight to the empty circle sweep they on. Plutus. I recognise you and your mighty Pan. A daring step to take, a rash bold thing ; I know what is not known to every man. And open as I ought this narrow ring. Oh ! may the issue favourable be ! Whither this strange step leads they do not see. The world may gaze on wonders unforeseen To spring to life from what to-night has been. Wild Song. Ye, in holiday array. Decked with gaud and glitter gay. See, where rough they come and rude — The powerful, active, strong-built brood— 64 TAtrsTus. With rapid run, with active spring, Leaping light into the ring. Fauns. The Fauns, a merry group, in pleaSant dance, With oak-leaf wreath on their crisp curls, advance. A fine sharp-pointed ear up presses, To meet the curly tresses. A stumpy little nose, a broad flat face, Are no bad passports to a lady's grace. In dances, from the paw of the young faun The fairest lady's hand is not withdrawn. Satte. The goat-foot Satyr now hops in, With shrunk leg — sinewy and thin. He, chamois-like, from mountain height. Looks round him with a proud delight. In the keen air breathes freedom — ^life ; Despises homestead, child, and wife, Who in the valley's depth contrive, 'Mid steam and smoke, to keep alive, Nor envy him his world on high— His solitudes of cliff and sky. Gnomes. And now 4rips in a tiny band ; Not two-and two, or hand in hand. FAUSTTJS. 65 With lamplet bright, in mossy dress, In intermingling lines we press. Each mannikin on his own labours Intent, nor thinking of his neighbours. Thus hither, thither, in and out. Like shiny ants, we run about. A kindly crew, a thrifty race; Our haunt, the poor man's dwelling-place; Chirurgeons of the rocks well known. Our skill in mountain practice shown. We cup and bleed the hills ; we drain Of its best wealth the mineral vein ; Fling liberally the metals out : ' Cheer up ! dheer up ! ' our joyous shout. Benevolent is our intent. And good is still to good men meant. The good man's friend; yet from the earth We drag into the light of day The gold for which men steal and slay. And woman gives her soul away. Nor, thanks to us, shall iron brand Be wanting to the proud man's hand. Who murders wholesale. Take man's life. Or steal, or take another's wife : Break these commandments three, the rest Will soon be slighted or transgressed. We grieve not : we are clear of blame. Guiltless and calm. Be thou the same ! 66 FAUSTUS. Giants. Here come the wild men, fierce and fell — . Among the Hartzberg heights that dwell : Tumultuously down they throng, In nature's naked vigour strong ; The pine-stem in each rough right hand-;. Below the waist a padded band, A leafy screen above the knees : The Pope hath life-guards none like these. Ntmphs in Choie {surrounding the great Pan, who now appears). He comes ! The Universe is here In Pan presented. Eound him dance. All ye that be of happiest cheer, With antic measure, sportive glance ! Earnest he is, and kindly, and his will Is to see all around him happy stiU. Under the blue roof of the vaulted sky, He sits reposing with a wakeful eye ; Lists to the lullabies soft waters keep, And breezes that would rock him into sleep. When he sleeps at middle day No leaflet stirs upon the spray Spirits of sweet herbs silently Are breathing thro' the still soft sky ; Nor may the Nymph be gay FAUSTUS. 67 In that hush of noontide deep ; And, where she stood, she stands, in languorous sleep. When, with unexpected shout. His tremendous voice rings out, Like lightning among crashing trees, Or the roaring of the seas, As the sound rolls hither, thither, All would fly ; but how ? or whither ? Hosts in battle hour are quailing, Heroes' hearts with terror failing : Honour to whom honour 's due, To the leader of the crew ! Deputation of Gnomes (to the great Pan). If a rich and sparkling treasure Winds thro' cliffs its secret threads, 'T is the rod of the diviner Shows the labyrinthine beds. Troglodytes, in sunless grottoes. Vaults below the earth, we live ; Thine, the wealth that thence we bring thee. To the eye of day to give ! We have found a wondrous fountain. Well of wealth that, overflowing, v2 68 FAusTtrs. More than a whole life could gather In a moment is bestowing. Without thee it is imperfect ; Thou, for others still possessing, Take it. Wealth to thee entrusted, To the whole world is a blessing. Plutus. Keep cool ! for strange things are about to be ; But what will come, let 's bear it cheerfully. You're not a man without some self-control, An incident comes on that well may try it — Stiffly will this age and the next deny it : Set it down truly in your protocol. Herald {laying his hand on the staff which Plutus holds). With what soft steps these miniatures of man Lead to the fount of fire majestic Pan ; Up from the deep abyss the torrents seethe. Then sink into a lower gulf beneath. The open mouth stands for a moment black, Till whirl the many-coloured billows back. The monarch of the woodlands, in delight, With a child's wonder gazes on the sight ; And the gold-river, like a living thing. Seems to enjoy the rapture of the king Leaps up exultingly, and in its play Scatters all round foam-showers of pearly spray. IfAUSTUS. 69 There he stands musing, o'er the fountain bent : — Oh! trust not that wild wilful element. But see ! his beard drops down, falls in. Who is he ? who ? — the smooth soft chin Hid by his hand ? The beard takes fire, Flies back, the blaze is mounting higher ! The garland crackles on his brow, And head and breast are burning now. The flames, the efforts to subdue them And beat them under, but renew them. Caught in the blaze the masks are all Burning. Disastrous festival ! But what 's the rumour, that I hear That whispered runs from ear to ear. Oh! luckless evil-omened night! What suffering hast thou brought and sorrow ! On what a scene the morning light Will dawn ! — sad night ! — unhappy morrow ! The cry swells louder than before, ' The Emperor ! the Emperor ! ' He is in danger, is in pain — The Emperor's burned, and all his train. A curse on them who would advise. And lead him on in this disguise. Laced up in this fantastic trim, And these pitch twigs, to ruin him 70 FAUSTUS. And themselves, — with their mad roar And song and revel evermore : He and they together go, 'T is universal overthrow ! Oh! Youth, impetuous Youth, and wilt thou never Curb the wild impulse of life's happy season ? And Power, imperious Power, wilt thou not ever, Acting Omnipotence, give ear to Reason ? See! on our mimic forest fierce flames play, And lapping here and there and everywhere, Up to the raftered roof sharp lire-tongues play. In smouldering ashes, work of one black night, Imperial splendour meets the morning light. Plutus. Feae thus far hath had its sway, Now bring Help into the play. See! the holy staff we bring — With it smite and smite the ground Till it tremble, rock, and ring. And obey the magic sound. Hush ! the cool airs from beneath A delicious fragrance breathe. Vapours of the valley, rise! Float and flow into the skies ! PAL'STUS. 71 Come, ye mists that from the plain Loaded are with the soft rain ; Cloudy fog-streaks, be ye spread O'er the Are- waves raging red ; Languid winds, from all sides blow, Waft the soft dews sailing low. That in upper air encamping, Curl the cloudlets drizzling, damping : Hither come, ye moist ones, playing ; Fleecy folds come darkening, brightening, Come, with gentle winds allaying — Calm the ire of the false fire Into peaceful summer lightning, Or faint sunset's watery glow ! When Spirits threaten is the hour For Magic to assert its power. 72 FAUSTUS. Pleastjee Garden. Morning Sun — The Kaisek — Aw Court — Faustus and Mephistopheles — {drest becomingly in the usual Court dress of the day). Both kneel. Marshal, Heekmeister, Treasurer, Pages, Feudal Lord, and Court Fool. Faustus. Sire, pardon you of flames this magic show ? Kais£e. Oh ! that I often were deluded so ! All of a sudden a new realm I trod, Seemed of the world of fire the very God ; Coal-rocks, more black than night, for ever fed Bright flamelets, bursting from that marble bed ; While here and there from seething gulfs would rise A thousand flames that whirled into the skies, Where, playing loose in air, they hung aloof, Flickered and waved, and formed a vaulted roof; Whence tongues of light, that intermingling crost. Gave to the eye a dome, now seen, now lost. Between far flre-shafts, wreathed with curling flame. Long lines of nations, onward moving, came FAUSIUS. 73 Toward me : in wide rings streamed the pressing crowd — My subjects all — and all to me in homage bowed. And evermore some courtier's well-known face, 'Mong the strange visages that thronged the place, Would catch my glance, and claim a moment's grace. With thousand salamanders circled round, I seemed the prince of that enchanted ground. Mephistophelf.s. Thou art ! The Elements owe thee allegiance ! Fire! thou hast tested it — gave prompt obedience. Throw thee into the boiling Ocean's waves, And straightway all sea-spirits are thy slaves! Here, too, in pride of conquest, shalt thou tread Triumphantly the ocean's pearl-strewn bed ; See billows ever round thee rise and fall. And guard thee with their undulating wall. The tender green waves, purple-tinged, are swelling To form in the drear deep thy royal dwelling. The billows do thee homage. Through the brine A palace moves with every step of thine. The walls are happy in the magic gift Of life, exulting as, with arrow-swift To and fro gambollings, their place they shift. And the sea-monsters float up from their caves; To tlie mild lustre glimmering thro' the waves, 74 FAUSTUS. Throng to the light, till now unseen ; but they Fear to come nearer thee, and dart away : And dragons, golden-scaled, their high crests rear, And sharks, whose jaws gape wide, but cause no fear. Thou art a prince ! but ne'er on Levee-day Hast thou beheld so brilliant a display. Beauty smiles on thee ! the Nereides Come to the very windows, if you please, Of the fresh-water palace in the seas — The young ones, shy and rather curious fish, The older, sober girls as one could wish. Thetis has heard it — holds out hands and lips : A second Peleus will the first eclipse ; — Then on Olympus height thy place to be ! Kaiseb. The realms of Aik I 'd rather leave to thee ; We are in no hurry to ascend that throne. Mephistopheles. And Earth, great prince, already is thine own. Kaisee. Through what good fortune have I chanced upon This wonder of the Thousand Nights and One ? If, like Sheherazade, most prolific Of story-tellers, you would every day Give something new — oh! that were a specific 'Gainst dullness that I never could repay. FAUSTUS. 75 Be ready still with such delightful tales Of wonder when despondency prevaile, And cares upon the sinking spirit weigh — Still cheer me when all else to cheer me fails. Marshal (steps hastily in). May it please your Highness, I had never thought That it at any time could be my lot Such joyous tidings to communicate As fill me now with rapture — every debt Has been paid off, the usurers' claws are dulled, My tortures — sharper than hell's torments — ^lulled. There can not be in heaven a happier man. Hebembistee {follows hastily). The army 's paid whatever had been due. The soldiers to their colours pledged anew, The merry Lanzknecht's got a large advance, And girls and vintners bless the lucky chance. Kaiseb. You breathe more freely, and your care-worn face Has actually assumed a cheerful grace ; And what a step ! — why, I protest, you run ! Teeasdbee (entering). Ask these men, they will tell what they have done. 76 FAUSTUS. Fatjstds. The chancellor will please to state the case; It falls in with the duties of his place. Chancellor {advancing slowly). Who could hare ever dreamed such happiness Would come the days of my old age to bless. Listen! and look upon the heaven-sent leaf, That into joy hath changed a people's grief. {Reads) — ' To all whom iteoneerneth, and so forth : — This note of hand, that purports to be worth A thousand crowns, s jbjects to such demand The boundless treasure buried in the land. And furthermore, said treasure underground, To pay said sum is, whensoever found, And wheresoever, firmly pledged and bound.' Kaiser. Audacity unheard of !— foul deceit! Who signed the emperor's name to such vile cheat? What punishment can for such crime atone ? Teeastjker. Forget you, Sire, the writing is your own? This last night you were in the character Of Pan : we saw the Chancellor prefer The suit. He said, 'A few strokes of your pen Will bless the people over whom you reign. FAUSTUS. 77 Do make them happy on this festal night.' And then you did take up the pen and write. No time was lost. A thousand artists plied, A thousand-fold the scroll was multiplied; And that the good to every one might fall, We stamped at once the series, one and all. Tens — thirties— fifties— hundreds oiFwe strike! Never was anything that men so like : Your city, mouldering and in despair, Has caught new life, and joy is everywhere. Long as your name was by the world held dear, Never did it so brightly shine as here — The alphabet ! what is it to this sign? — To this 'hoc signo vinces' note of thine? Kaiser. For good gold, then, in court and camp it passes. And for good gold is taken by the masses ? I must permit it, tho' it does seem odd. Marshal. The papers flying everywhere abroad — Stop it — oh yes ! — the lightning flashes stop — At every banker's booth and money-shop, For each leaf you can have (deducting still Some discount) gold and silver, if you will. Then off with you to butcher and to baker. Vintner, and such like — tailor, sausage-maker. Half the world passes — wealth is such a blessing — 78 FAUSTUS. Its days in feasting — the other half in dressing. Flaunting in their new clothes — show their new riches — The mercer cuts away — the stitcher stitches — And 'long live Caesar !' blurts out, 'mid the ringing. Of plates — of boiling, broiling, swearing, singing. Mephistopheles. And he who walks alone the public ways, And fixes on the fairest there his gaze. And sees her move, with bland attractiveness, In all the splendour of imposing dress ; Thepeacock's proud plume shades one eye, the while She smirks, and simpers by with meaning smile — Methinks she sees, and seems to understand The import of this little note of hand. Aye ! and it wins from her, as by a spell, The favours that my lady has to sell. When words are weak, and wit all out of joint. 'Tis this that brings a woman to the point : Close in the bosom, hidden there from view, It lies so nicely in a billet-doux. The priest — he now no purse or scrip need bear Devoutly folds it in his Book of Prayer. The soldier moves more freely, at his loins No longer carrying a weight of coins. Pardon me, Sire ; on such details to dwell, No doubt seems trifling with the miracle. fausttjs. 79 Faustus. The treasure that within the land lies deep, Entranced, as 't were, in an enchanted sleep, Frozen and fixed— useless, while unemployed — This may be disemprisoned, be enjoyed. Man, in imagination's boldest hour, To reach such treasure's limit has no power. The intellect strives ever, strives in vain, Some dim anticipation to attain ; But Spirits grasp it— see beyond the sense- Have in the Boundless boundless confidence. Mephistopheles. An easy substitute for gold and pearls This paper is, and its convenience such, We know at once how little, and how much We have : no need of testing and of weighing ; No chaffering, cheapening, proving, or assaying But to the vintner's, or the merry girl's. Off with us ! Wish we specie — little danger Of waiting long to find a money-changer. At worst it is but digging — in a trice You shovel up cup and trinkets plenty; call An auction, for the bill make quick provision, To the discomfiture and shame of aU Who looked upon our project with derision. Once used to them, men will have nothing but These. leaves — so easy to receive and spend; 80 FAUSTUS. And the realm circulates, from this hour out, Jewels, and gold, and paper to no end. Kaiser (to Faustus and Mephistopheles). You 've done the state some service, and a meed Appropriate to such service I 've decreed. We do appoint you now, of our good pleasure, Our custodees of subterranean treasure. Wealth from all other eyes that Earth holds hid, Guard ; let none dig or delve but as you bid. {To THE Officers of the Treasuet.) And, Treasurers, as behoves in your high place, Aid with becoming dignity and grace. Thus shall we see, with profit and delight, The Upper- and the Under-world unite. Treasurer. No danger. Sire, of discord or debate. Or deficit, now that my happy fate Makes the magician my associate. [_Exit with Faustus. Kaiser. If I distribute gifts among my court. How will they use them ? let each tell me now. FAUSTUS. 81 First Page (receiving his gift). I '11 pass my life in gaiety and sport. Skcond Page (receiving). I '11 buy a frontlet for my lady's brow : Rings in her ear and on her hand shall shine. Chamberlain (taking his present). I '11 drink two flasks for one, and better wine. Another. The dice, I feel them — and the itch of play. Feudal Lord (thoughtfully). I '11 free my castle from its debts to-day. Ajstother. A treasure ! — yes, a treasure ! — with the rest I '11 hoard it up securely in a chest. Kaiser. I thought to have waked the ardour that inspires Bold enterprise — new deeds and new desires. Wealth leaves you each employed at his old game — The same ! I should have known you — stiU the same. G 82 FATJSTUS. {The CoTJET Fool, who had been supposed dead, presents himself.) Fool (approaching). You shower down gifts, let me have part of the shower. Kaiser. What I you alive ! you 'd drink them in an hour. Fool. Drink ? — magic leaves ! I comprehend you not. Kaisek. Strange if you did ! you 'd use them badly, sot ! Fool. There, more are dropping — I do not know what To do. Kaisee. Do ! take them, they fell to your lot. \_Exit Kaisee. Fool. Five thousand crowns! the words are written plain. Mephistophelbs. What, two-legged bladder, on thy feet again ? Fool. Aye ! down, then up, seldom so well as now. faustus. s3 Mephistopheles. How glad you look, the sweat runs down your brow. Fool. And is this money? look at it ; what do you think? Mephistopheles. Money, no doubt of it, and meat and drink. Fool. And will it buy me corn, land, house, and kine ? Mephistopheles. No doubt of it : bid only, they are thine. Fool. Castle and park, and forest, fish-pond, chase ? Mephistopheles. All these — and then the title of Your Grace. Fool. I '11 have the castle ; sleep to-night in it. Mephistopheles (alone). Who but will now acknowledge our fool's wit ? g2 S4 FAUST us. Dark Gallery. Faustus — Mephistophbles. Mephistopheles, Why drag me down these dismal passages ? A pleasant notion of what pleasant is You seem to have. The merriment within, The gay throng o£ great people crowding thick- Why drag me from it ? 't is the very scene For droUery, cajolery and trick. Fatjstits. Speak not of that. You cannot but have been Outwearied with its sameness long ago, The glitter is all gone of that poor show. The purpose — or I take it so to be — Of all your restless shuflSing to and fro, Is to escape a moment's talk with me. Now I am tortured into act tho' loth — The Chamberlain and Marshal at me both. The Emperor 's impatient for the play Of Helena and Pa,ris, so they say : He wills it, and there must be no delay. The model forms of man's and woman's beauty He would behold as they appeared in life : Swift to the task — up, Spirit ! do thy duty. The emperor waits — I may not break my word. FAUSTUS. 85 Mephistopheles. So lightly to have promised was absurd. Faustus. This comes, companion, from the arts you use : We made him rich, and now we must amuse. Mephistopheles. You think the thing is done as soon as said. Here before steeps more perilous we stand, That guard the frontier of a foreign land. Art rash enough the hostile ground to tread ? Aye! with the devil to pay, 'tis mighty cheap, Worlds of new debt upon your head to heap. Would you' call up their Helena of old. Like those pale paper phantoms of false gold ? Of witch materials from the yielding sex — Of dwarfy men, with puffed and pursy necks — Of midnight ghosts and goblins, and the stuff That ghosts are made of, you shall have enough. But devils' drabs — tho' good things in their way — Would not quite do your heroine parts to play. Faustus. Aye, twanging on the same old string again I Why is it that you never can speak plain ? Consult with you ! that always is about One's worst expedient — you suggest new doubt. 86" FAUSTUS. The father of all hindrance — your advice, An agent's — for each job who has his price ; Mumble but a few sounds, and, quick as thought. While one looks round, you have them on the spot. Mephistopheles. I and the Heathen never hit it well. They 're none of mine, and they have their own hell. But there are means Fatjstus. Speak ! speak ! delay me not. Mepetistophelbs. But there are means — reluctantly do I Unveil a higher Mystery — Goddesses August enthrone themselves in loneliness. Place none around them, glimpse of Time still less. They are — we speak not of them, scarce will think — They are the Mothers Fatjstus. Mothers ! Mephistopheles. Do you shrink ? Are you shuddering ? FAtrsTus. 87 Faustus. Mothers ! ■ mothers ! It sounds strange. Mephistopheles. And is so. Goddesses heyond the range Known to you mortals. We of them would keep Strict silence. For their homes you may scrape deep Under the undermost. Aye, go there, do. You have yourself to hlame for it ; but for you We 'd have no need of them. Fatjstus. The road ? Mephistopheles. The road ! There 's no road. Road ! — road to where none have trod Ever — none ever wiU tread ! — road to where I warrant never suppliant bent in prayer, Nor ever will hereafter ! Art thou ready ? No locks are there — no bolts to be pushed back ; But solitudes whirl round in endless eddy. Can'st grasp in thought what no words can express — Vacuity and utter loneliness ? 88 facsttjs. Faustus. You might have spared, methinks, this solemn speeching ; Something of the old time it seems to smack ; Brings back the very smell of the witch kitchen. Have I not dealt in the world ? and have I not There learned the empty ? — there the empty taught ? What I saw clearly, if I spoke out plain. Was I not doubly contradicted then ? And to escape the blows from all sides given. To savage solitude was I not driven, Till sick of life in such dull sameness passed, I gave me over to the Devil at last ? Mephistopheles. And hadst thou swum thro' ocean, even within Its shoreless desolation, thou would'st see Wave on wave coming everlastingly, In the very jaws of ruin ; something still Would meet the eye — say, dolphins on the green Of the Smooth surface, sporting at their will ; Cloud-shadows trailing — sun, moon, many a star. In the illimitable void afar Nothing whatever — nothing there is seen. Where your foot falls the unsubstantial ground Sinks down— still sinks; you move — you hear no sound. PAusxus. 89 Faustus. — The very rant of the hierophant When he is wheedling some poor neophyte. Your promise though is the reverse of his, And its results in all things opposite. You'd send me to the empty to increase Science, Art, Power. I see what you are at — The old tale of the chestnuts, and the cat Scorching his paws in the cinders. Never mind, I '11 sift it to the depth : in this, your evil Find good — in this your nothing all things find. Mephistopheles. We part ; but I must own you know the devil. Here take this Key. Faustus. That little thing ! Mephistopheles. Aye, take And hold it tight, nor little of it make. Faustus. It swells ! — ^it shines ! — it flashes in my hand ! Mephistopheles. The Tirtue there is in it, understand ! The Key will scent the Mothers to their lair. Follow his guidance down, and you are there. 90 FAUSTUS. Faustus. The Mothers ! it falls on me like a blow. How can a word — a sound — affect me so ? Mephistopheles. Such narrow-mindedness ! At a new word Quailing ! — would'st never hear but what you 've heard ? If — pardon me — a meaning 's to be found, Beyond what your thoughts reach to, in a sound, Is that a matter to astonish us. So long inured to the Miraculous ? Faustus. Think not in torpor that I place my weal. 'T is man's — 't is man's to shudder and to feel The Human in us, though the world disown , And mock at feeling, seized and startled thus. In on itself by strong revulsion thrown. Thrills at the Vast — the Awful — the Unknown. Mephistophjsles. Sink then ! I might say rise — 'tis one. Fly far From earth — from all existences that are, Into the realms of Image unconfined. Gloat upon charms that long have ceased to bet Like cloud-wreaths rising, rolling, the combined Army of Apparitions rush on thee. FAUSTUS. 91 Wave high the Key, and keep them at far length — From thy person keep them. Faustus. As I grasp the Key, My heart expands to the great work, and strength Is given me. Onward ! Mephistopheles. A burning Tripod tells thee thou hast found The deepest — art below the deepest ground ; And by its light the Mothers thou wilt see — Some sit, and others stand, or, it may be, In movement are. Formation, Transformation, Eternal Play of the Eternal Mind, With Semblances of all things in creation, For ever and for ever sweeping round. Onward ! They see thee not, for they but see Shapes substanceless. There 's risk — ^be bold — be brave : Straight to the Tripod ; touch it with the Key. [Faustus takes a firm commanding attitude with the key. Mephistopheles {looking at him). All 's right ! it clings !— it follows ! Faithful slave ! Thou reascendest, — Fortune raising thee — Calm, self-possessed, as one that knows not fear ; Ere they have marked thine absence, thou art here. 92 FAUSTUS. Bring but the Tripod hither, and from night Hero and Heroine you may raise to light — The first to venture on such bold design. 'T is done ; to have accomplished it is thine — And now as the magician bids, the clouds Of waving incense shape them into Gods. Faitstus. And now ? what now ? Mephistopheles. Thy being downward strain. Stamp, and you sink ; stamp — you ascend again. [Fadstus stamps and sinks. Mephistopheles (alone). If the Key lead him but in the right track ! — I wonder; is he ever to come back? PAUSTUS. 93 Brilliantly Lighted Haxls. Kaisee and Princes. The Court in motion. Chamberlain, Marshal, Mephistopheles, Blondine, Brunette, Dame, Page. Chamberlain (to Mephistopheles). Give us the Spirit scene without delay — The Emperor 's impatient for the play. Marshal. 'T was but a moment since his Grace did ask About it. Haste ! The party was made for This show of yours, and the thing must be done, Or you will compromise the emperor. Mephistopheles. My friend 's this very moment at his task ; He has gone away to work at it — has gone To his study ; has begun it : 't will go on Well — I've no doubt of it. Closeted close, none dare Disturb him as he works in secret there. Who would raise up such treasure — would bid rise The Beautiful — needs for the enterprise The highest Art — the Magic of the Wise. 94 FAUSTUS. Marshal. It matters not what arts you call to aid ; The Emperor's will is that the play be played. Blondine (to Mbphistophbles). A word, an't please you, sir. You see my face Is now quite clear ; but 't is another case When summer comes. In the hot horrid weather A hundred brown-red spots sprout out together. Hiding the white skin, clouding it with freckles. A cure, sir ! Mbphistophbles. Pity, that a face so pretty, That smiles so dazzlingly on me to-day, Should look so in the month of merry May, Like a young panther's hide — all spots and speckles. Take frog-spawn, toads' tongues — stew all in a skillet, And when the moon is at the full distil it ; And in the wane, be sure to spread it on. Spring comes and goes — the freckles, too, are gone. BEtTNETTE {having made her way to him). The crowd throng round, they fawn on you and flatter ; May I a plain word speak ? A little matter FAUSTtTS. 95 Ails me. A cure, my lord ! A frozen foot Mars walking, dancing, spoils even my salute When I would curtsey. Mephistopheles. If you would but grant Me just to press your foot Brunette. With a gallant — A lover — I might do it. Mephistopheles. Child! the print Of my foot hath a deeper meaning in 't. A cure will follow if my foot but strike, Whatever the disease. 'T is like to like Forms the great secret of the healing art. Thus foot cures foot, and so with every part. Now for the tread, which you need not return. Brunette (screaming). Pain ! pain ! it was a hard stamp, like a burn, As of a horse-hoof. How can I endure The torture ? Mephistopheles. With the torture take the cure. At dances you can now with pleasure move, At table mix feet with the man you love. 96 rAirsTrs. Dame {pressing forward). Me ! — let me through ! I cannot bear the pain ; It boils up from my heart — it burns my brain. Last night he lived but in my glances ; he Chats with her now, and turns his back on me. Mephistopheles. A case of difficulty 't is and doubt. You must press gently up to him — hear me out — This cinder keep, and with it on his cloak Or on his sleeves or shoulder make a stroke, Or any part that may your fancy take : Remembrance and repentance will awake; The cinder you immediately must swallow ; Wine must not touch your lips, nar water follow This food. He sighs before your door to-night. Dame. There is not poison in it ? Mephistopheles (enraged). Honour bright ! Think who you speak with. Long enough in vain Might a man search to find the like again. It came from one of the old wizard-pyres. — We 've not been lately stirring up the flres. FAUSTCS. 97 Page {approaching). They scorn my love — they say 't is but a boy's. Mephistopheles {aside). Whom shall I listen to ? What crowds ! what noise ! {To the Page) Tell not to growing girls your hopes and fears ; Youth is not valued but by those in years. ' {Others press up to him.) There — more ; no end of comers— age and youth. My last, sad, only refuge is the truth. Oh, Mothers ! Mothers ! let but Faustue loose. {Looks round.) The lights already glimmer in the hall. The whole court's moving thither, one and all. Each pressing after each in their degrees. Through the long walks, down the far galleries. And now they gather in the ample space Of the old Ritter-saal, and scarce find place. O'er the broad walls the tapestry hangs rich. And armour gleams from every nook and niche. It needs no charm to bid the Spirits come : Your Ghosts are here if anywhere at home. 98 TAUSTUS. RiTTEE-SAAL, dimly lighted. Kaisee and Couet have entered. Herald, Astrologer, Mephis- TOPHELES, Architect, Fatistus, Ladies, Eit- tees, &c. Herald. The usage of announcing our new play Must to necessity for once give way. The Spirits keep their secrets, and in vain We seek the hidden magic to explain. The seats arranged, the chairs are ready all^ The emperor placed in front of the high wall. There, worked in tapestry, he may behold In peace the wars of the great days of old. Now the court circle 's filled, and all around Crowds throng the benches, lining the background. Lovers find room near lovers, and their fear Will press them closer when the Ghosts appear. And so, all being settled and at ease, We are quite ready. Rise, Ghosts, if you please. [ Trumpets, Asteologee. Begin the Drama ! 't is the Sire's command. Obedient to his will, ye Walls expand ! Magic for everything that we require. FAUSTDS. 99 In any exigency, is at hand. The curtain, curling as though touched by fire. Is gone — the wall divides — turns round, and there Before us stands, far in, a theatre, With light mysterious — none can say whence come ; — And I ascend to the Proscenium. Mephistopheles (^peeping out of the prompter's box). No player like me, so up to all stage trick ! And prompting is the devil's rhetoric. [ To the Astrologer. The tune, to which the Stars keep time, you hear. You '11 catch my whispers with but half an ear. Astrologer. By Magic raised a temple here behold, A massive structure of the days of old — Like Atlas, who propped heaven up long ago. Stand pillars, plenty of them, in a row. Their load of stone such columns well may bear : 'Twere a large building asked more than a pair. Architect. And this is the Antique ! You cannot force Me into praising it — 'tis cumbrous, coarse. But Kough, it seems, is Noble ; Clumsy, Grand. Give me the structure men can understand. h2 100 PAUSTUS. Our long, thin,, narrow pillars, I so love, Striving into the Boundlessness above. The sharp-arched zenith lifts us to the skies. Give me the edifice that edifies ! Astrologer. Welcome with reverence this star-favoured hour ; Be Eeason bound in words of magic power ; Let Fancy lord it, wandering, wild and free ; All the Mind images the Eye will see ; All the Eye sees, the Mind as true receive : It is Impossible, and so Believe. [Faxjsttjs is seen ascending on the other side of the proscenium. Astrologer. In priestly robe attired, with flower-wreathed brow, A great magician stands before you now, Kedeeming the bold promise that he gave — A trlpoiwith him from a hollow cave Of the realms under earth is rising up : I feel the" fragrance of the incense-cup. He bounes him now the mighty work to bless. And we can augur nothing but success. Faustus. In your name, oh, ye Mothers ! you, whose throne Is in the Boundless — you, who dwell alone, 'X FACSTUS. 101 Yet not in uncompanioned loneliness. Around your head the flitting fantasms press Of life, yet without life. What was, what cast The splendour of its presence on the Past, Yonder, as erst, abides eternally It was, and having been, will ever be. It you distribute, beings of all might. To day's pavilion, to the vault of night: Some thro' life's cheerful pageant sport their hour, Some the bold Magian . seeks, and subjects to his power, And, fearless now, to the expectant gaze His wonder-works he lavishly displays. ASTEOLOGEE. The burning key hath scarcely touched the bowl, When round us undulating vapours roll. And in, like rising clouds, the dense mists slide. Wave — lengthen — form a sphere — unite — divide — Are two — and they — surpassing wonder of The Spirits' skill ! — make music as they move. It comes, one knows not how, from tones of air ; The melody moves with them everywhere. The pillar-shaft, the very triglyph rings ; I do believe that all the temple sings. From the light veil, as by the music led, A lovely youth steps forth with measured tread. 102 FAUSTtrs. The waving mist- wreath falls. He stands out clear. Who does not see the graceful Paris here ? Ladt. What vigour there ! and with such youthful grace ! Second Lady. How fresh the peach-bloom on that fair soft face ! Thied Lady. How finely carved each sweet and swelling lip. FotTETH Lady. From such a cup delicious 'twere to sip. FlTTH L,ady. He's handsome, but I cannot think refined. Sixth Lady. More elegant he might be, to my mind. Knight. I see the traces of the shepherd boy ; No mariners — nothing of the Prince of Troy. Second Knight. Yes, thus half naked he looks pretty well : Show him in armour — that's the way to tell. Lady. How calmly he inclines him — he would rest. FAUSTUS. 103 t Knight. A pleasant couch for you were that soft breast. Lady. He bends his arm above his head — what grace ! Chamberlain. Budeness — 'gainst all proprieties of place. Lady. Yon chamber-knights find fault for evennore. Chambeklain. To stretch and yawn before the emperor ! Lady. He acts his part — he thinks himself alone. Chamberlain. The Theatre should not forget the Throne. Lady. Sleep on the fair youth softly seems to fall. Chamberlain. Belike he '11 snore ; you know 't is nature all. Young Lady (enraptured). What fragrance mixes with the incense-wreaths, And on my heart delicious freshness breathes ! 104 FAUSTUS. Elpeelt Lady.' Yes, all hearts feel a breath of rapturous power ! It flows from him. Old Lady. It is the growing flower Of human life, that as ambrosia here Blooms in the youth, and fills the atmosphere. [Helena advances. Mephistopheles. This, then, was she ! My rest she 'U never break. Fair, doubtless ; but with me she does not take. Astrologer. Here aU at fault, I own it, I must seem. She comes ! the all-beautiful ! Oh that a tongue Of fire were mine ! The poets, who have sung Of Beauty, did but picture their own dream. They saw not. Who hath seen her — sees her — is Entranced, is dumb. To win, to call her his — Oh ! that it could but be ! — Wish wild and vain ! Faustus. Do my eyes see ? or deep within the brain Doth the full fountain of all Beauty shed Its gushing torrents ? Oh ! what glorious gain Is mine! bright issue of that journey dread— FAUSTUS. 105 The world — yet undeveloped, undisclosed, How mean ! how abject ! — rose up in the hour Of my initiation, robed with power, And on its own eternity reposed. No painted cloud, no transitory gleam, No sand-drift now of unsubstantial dream, But kindred with man's heart, indeed divine. If that in thought I ever part from thee. Oh ! may I in that moment cease to be ! The shape that won me from myself away Amused me in the magic mirror's play — How faint ! how^^ble, to these charms of thine ! In thee life's springs of ggwer and passion live. Life of my life ! to thee myself I give ! Love ! adoration 1 madness of the heart ! Mephistopheles {from the prompter's box). Collect yourself — you fall out of your part. Elderly Ladt. Shapely and tall — only the head too small. YOUNGEE. Look at the foot^-'t is clumsy after all. Diplomatist. I have seen princesses ; from head to foot I do pronounce her beauty absolute. 106 FAUSTUS. COTJETIBB. Softly she steals to where he sleeping is. Lady. She shocks me Near that pure young form of his! Poet. He is illumined in the light serene. Ladt. Endymion ! — Luda ! — 't is the very scene As painted. Poet. Yes ; the goddess downward sinks, And o'er the sleeper bends ; his breath she drinks. How enviable ! — a kiss ! — the measure 's full. Duenna. What ! before all the people — that is cool. Fausttjs. Distracting favour to the boy! Mephistopheles . Be still. Do let the phantom lady have her will. COUETIEE. She glides away on light foot ; he awakes. FAUSTUS. 107 LadT; Looks back — I thought so — I make no mistakes. Knight. He 's stricken dumb ! ' Is this the work of dreams ? ' Thinks he : ' what strange things came on me in sleep ! ' Ladt. She is, methinks, a dame that knows, not ' seems,' And her experience holds such strange things cheap. CotTKTIER. And now she turns to him with such calm grace. Ladt. I see there 's a new pupil in the case — An unformed boy belike of tender age ; And she would take him into tutelage. In such things all men are so very dull. Poor lad ! he fancies he 's the first she has taught. Knight. What dignity ! so calmly beautiful ! Ladt. A vile coarse wretch ! no better than she ought. Page. Oh that I were in that young shepherd's place ! 1.08 FAUSTUS. COUETIEE. Who would not in a net like this be caught ? Ladt. The gem from time to time, with many a one, Has been from hand to hand still shifted on — The gilding rubbed off many a year ago. Anothek Ladt. From ten years old she has been but so-so. Knight. Yes, Fortune favoured them. Yet how divine The precious relic — would that it were mine. Gelahktee, I see her, but it is not free from doubt That she 's the Helen men so talk about. The danger of illusion here is great ; The eye misleads and will exaggerate. ' Stick to the written letter' is my creed : I look into my Homer, and I read How she so pleased all the old men of Troy, ; And here methinks the self-same thing we see : I am not young, and she so pleases me. ASTEOLOGEE. He hath cast off the dreamy shepherd-boy; Wakes into hero — into man. See ! see ! He seizes her — she hath no power to flee — PAUSTDS. 109 With his nerved arm uplifts her. Can it be ? Thinks he to force her hence ? Fausttts {to Paris). Rash fool ! give o'er. Dare it ! defy me ! I can bear no more. Mephistophbles. These spirit-freaks, these odd extravagancios, Are mere stage-trick — they but act out your fancies. ASTEOLOGEE. One word. From what we see, I think we may Presume ' the Rape of Helen ' is the play. Faustus. What ! — Rape ? — Am I then nothing here ? The key- Is 't not stiU in my hand ? It guided me Through waves, and horrors, and the hollow roar Of wildernesses waste, to this firm shore. Here do I plant my foot — ^here actual life Is, and reality — high 'vantage ground From which the spirit with spirits may well dare strife, And for itself a double empire found. She was — ^how far away ! she is — how near ! Rescued, is doubly mine — is doubly dear. 110 FAUSTUS. Crown, Mothers, crown the daring with success. Who hath known her must perish or possess ! ASTEOLOGEE. What dost thou, Faustus ! Faustus ! look at him ! He grasps at her ! — the phantom shape grows dim. Now to the youth he points the key — and, lo ! He touches ; he hath touched him ! Woe ! woe ! woe ! [^JEx'plosion. Faustus lies on the ground. The spirits go off in smohe. Mephistopheles {takes Faustus on his shoulder). Aye, now he has it, aye. Yes, yes, just so ; Your fool's a heavy load in any case. And brings the devil himself into disgrace. \_Darkness. Tumult, FAUSTUa. I ] I ACT n. High arched narrow Gothic Chamber, for- merly FAUSTUS'S UNALTERED. Mbphistopheles, Chorus op Crickets, Famu- lus, Baccalaureus. [Mephistopheles steps out from behind a curtain ; while he raises if, and looks bach, Faustus is seen stretched out on an old-fashioned bed, Mephistopheles. Lie down there, luckless ! lie down, wretched thrall Of this inexplicable, inextricable Love-tangle ! His is the worst case of all. Whom Helen paralyses, little chance Has of recovering ever from the trance. \^Looks round him. As I look up — down — round me, — here. Nowhere does any change appear. Perhaps some slight shade in the colour Of the stained glass, — a trifle duller. The spiders' webs are spread more wide ; The paper 's yellower, the ink 's dried. 112 ■ FAUSTUS. All things in their old position — All things in their old condition. The yery pen with which he signed away Himself to the devil, look at it there still ! Aye, and the drop of Wood I coaxed from him, A dry stain crusts the barrel of the quill. What a rare object of virtu to seek For your collector ! — happiest of men. Could he but get possession of the pen ! Envied proprietor of such unique ! And the old sheepskin on its own old hook, Brings back that comic lecture, which so took With the poor boy, who ever since, no doubt, All its deep meaning still keeps puzzling out. My old warm Furry Friend, I like thy look ! I long again to wrap me round in thee, And put on the Professor, in full blow Of lecture-room infallibility ! How is it, that these sorry book-men know So well to get the feeling up ? Ah me ! In the devil it has died out, ages ago. [-ffe takes down and shakes the old fur gown: crickets, chaffers, moths, and other insects fly out. Chorus of Insects. Hail to thee ! hail to thee ! Patron and father ; TAUSTUS. 113 Welcome, and welcome be ! Swarm we and gather To welcome thy coming, Hovering and humming. In the faded and rotten, Of chambers neglected, In darkness forgotten. One by one, unperceived. Didst thou silently plant us ; Now thousands on thousands, In sunlight and glee, We sport and we flaunt us. Dust is rife With dancing life. Buzzing and welcoming. Welcoming thee. The scoundrel still sculks him The bosom within. More close than the moth In the furry old skin. Many are we — many are we. Every one of us welcomes thee. Mephistopheles. With what surprised and rapturous delight This young creation glads its maker's sight ; If a man do but sow, he may be sure Time in due season will the crop mature. I 1 14 PAUSTUS. I give the old fleece another whisk about. And here and there an odd one flutters out : Up and around, in corners, holes, and shelves, My darlings, find out snug berths for yourselves. Yonder, where broken boxes block the ground. And here in the old parchments time-embrowned ; In dusty potsherds, faded curtain shreds. And in the eye-holes there of dead men's heads — Come, moth and maggot, people once again The rubbish that in life was called the brain! \_Slips into the gown. Up on my shoulders, Furry Friend ! and then I for the hour am Principal again. But I must summon them o'er whom I claim Dominion, or there 's nothing in the name. ^He pulls the bell, which gives a harsh piercing sound, at which the halls shake, and the doors spring open. Famulus {tottering up the long dark passage). What a sounding ! what a shaking ! Stairs are trembling, walls are quaking ; Through the window's colour-flashes Lightnings tremble T — tempest crashes ! Is the floor asunder parting. Roof in ruins downward falling, JfAUSTUS. 115 And the bolted doors back starting Through some wonder-work appalling ? And look yonder, where a giant Stands in Faust's old fur, defiant ; And, with beck and glance and winking, Me he silently is calling : And I faint ! my knees are sinking. Shall I stand my ground ? or fly him ? Stay ! what ? — stay ! be murdered by him ? Mephistopheles. Come hither, friend; your name is Nieodemus. Famulus {crossing himself). High honoured master ! 't is my name — Oremus. Mephistopheles. Sink the Oremus I Famulus. I 'm so glad to see, Kind master, that you 've not forgotten me. Mephistopheles. I know you well — in years, but stiU in love With study — books you 're always thinking of. Most learned! most mossy ! even a deep-learned man Still studies on because 't is all he can: i2 116 FAUSTUS. 'T is like one building to a certain height A house of cards which none can finish quite. Your master, he is one, it may be said, Who always hits the nail upon the head — The well-known Doctor Wagner — anyhow The great man of the world of letters now: His genius 't is, that all inspires, unites, While Science mounts with him to prouder heights. There gathers round his chair an eager ring Of hearers — men who would learn everything. He, like Saint Peter, holds the keys — can show The secrets of above and of below ; He shines in all : no reputation is In any way to be compared to his — None anywhere now to be placed with him. Even Faustus' fame 's beginning to grow dim — He has made the great discoveries of our days. Famulus. Pardon, most noble sir ; permit me to Speak, sir ; permit me just to say to you That he is one who would shrink from such praise. His is a modest mind — he does not aim At rivalling the mighty master's fame. Since the great master's disappearance, he Seems ever wrapt in strange perplexity. For his return he looks, fgr health and hope From it — and thus his spirits he keeps up. FAUSTUS. 117 The chamber as in Doctor Faustus' day Hemaius — no change made since he went away : There, 't is kept waiting for its own old master. Myself — I scarcely venture to go in. What say the stars ? does the hour bode disaster ? The walls, as though with terror struck, still shake; The doors flew open, every bolt sprang back ; Else you had not come in here — you, even you. Mephistophbles. Where is be ? bring me to Mm — bring him here. Famulus. Ah, sir, the prohibition 's too severe — 'T is scarce a thing that I could venture on. Intent on the great work, he has lived alone For months in the stillest stillness. Only think, Think of this neatest, nattiest of all Our bookmen, blacked with soot from ear to nose; And his eyes blearing, and their raw red blink. As with throat parching at the fire he blows ; For the true moment every moment longs — His music still the clatter of the tongs ! Mephistophbles. To me he '11 scarce deny the entree. I 'm The lucky man, and this the lucky time. [_Exit Famulus. 118 FAUSTTJS. (Mephistophelbs sits down gravely.) I scarce have sate down in my place, When, hark ! a stirring from behind, And I behold a well-known face : My old friend, sure enough, again 1 find. But now he comes in the bold bearing Of our newest schools ; spares nothing, nobody — Dashing 'gainst all things, no bounds to his daring. Baccalaubbtjs {storming along the passage). Gateway free, doors loose, locks broken, Are a promise and a token That the living, as of old here, Shall not now like dead men moulder ; Pining, festering, putrefying, Where to live itself is dying. Walls are bending in and crumbling, Tumble-down partitions tumbling ; Roof and joist will fall asunder, Crushing every body under. Than myself of spirit few are More courageous, with heart truer ; Yet the prospect is so cheerless As to force back the most fearless. One step farther into danger T '11 not take for friend or stranger. FAUSTUS. 119 Very odd to-day the changes Seem, as back my memory ranges, When I was ' the fox ' * well hunted, And with jibe and jeer affronted ; When the gray-beard old deceivers Classed me with their true believers — One who all their figments hollow As the bread of life would swallow. Lying rascals, dry and crusty, Primed from their old parchments musty What they taught, and disbelieved it, But as handed down received it ; What they taught with no misgiving Robbed themselves and me of living. But see sitting in brown study One of these same bright and muddy, In the clear obscure, the glimmer Of the gray light growing dimmer ; There he sits as first I found him, With the rough brown sheepskin round him. Then he seemed to me right clever, Great man of the place ; however. That was all in the gone-bye time — The world's nonage : now 't is my time. I know him now ; he cannot catch me now — That day is over : at him, anyhow. * See Note. 120 FAUSTUS. If, old sir, your bald head in Lethe's pool Hath not been soaked, you may with those slant eyes The scholar of an old day recognise. But now remember I am out of school, And rid of academic rods and rule. You, sir, are just the same as long ago ; I am not what I was, I 'd have you know. Mephistophelbs. I am so glad my bell hath hither brought you — Even when a boy no common boy I thought you : The grub and chrysalis denote The future butterfly's gay coat. I well remember your delighted air, Your peaked lace collar and your flowing hair : Proud, child, you were of that same curly pate. You never wore the queue and crown — It had not to your day come down. And now to find you in a Sweden tete. Determined, resolute, from head to foot. Oh ! come not home with that imperious frown, The bare-faced terrors of the Absolute. Baccalaureus. Old gentleman, we are in the old place ; But change of time has come and changed the case. FAUSTUS. 121 'T is out of season to affect This motley two-edged dialect. You long ago might play at make-believe : Small art need any man employ, To fool an unsuspecting boy, Whom no one now will venture to deceive. Mephistopheles. If, speaking to the young, pure truth one speaks, It little suits the callow yellow beaks ; Years come and, what they heard from us, when brought Sack by their own experience dearly bought. They deem it all the fruit of their own skull — Speak of their master as supremely dull. Baccalaukeus. Or — as a knave, 'for who that deals with youth Speaks, face to face, direct the honest truth ; Your teacher still will strengthen or dilute. Palates of pious children as may suit. Mephistophbles. Learning and Teaching — there 's a time for each ; Your time for learning 's over : you can teach. Moons many since we met — some suns have rolled ; You must have gained Experience manifold. 122 PAusTus. Baccalaureus. 1 ExPEEiENCE ! foam and bubble, and its name Not to be mentioned with tbe Spirit's claim. Confess it ! nothing was till this day done Worth doing in Science — Science there was none. Mbphistopheles. I have thought so long— I had always a thick skull ; I now confess to ' silly — shallow — dull.' Baccaladrexts. That so delights me ! — some hope of you yet ! The first old man with brains I have ever met. Mephistophelbs. I dug for gold, I found but cinders horrid ; I cried them up for treasures rich and rare. Baccalaureus. Confess then that your bare-faced bald old fore- head Is nothing better than the dead skulls there. Mbphistopheles (calmly). Friend ! you are most discourteously replying. Baccalaureus. Courtesy ! in plain German, that means lying. FAUSTUS. 123 Mephistopheles {moving with his wheel chair towards the proscenium, addressing the audience). Light — air — no quarter up tliere! You '11 be civil — You 're sure to show your kindness to the devil. BACCALAUEEtlS. It is the very height of impudence, That what is dead and gone should make pretence Of being in existence. Man's life lives But in the Blood — and the blood, where, in truth. Stirs it so vigorously as in youth ? The young blood lives, aye ! and in eager strife Shapes to itself a new life out of life. There all is progress ! something still is done — The feeble falls, the active presses on. We have won half the world — yes ! youthful man Hath won it ; meanwhile what have you been doing ? Slept, nodded, dreamed, weighed, thought, plan after plan Suggesting still, and languidly pursuing? Old age is a cold fever's feeble flame, Life's peevish winter of obstruction chilling, Man is at Thirty dead, or all the same — 'T were better kill you while you are worth killing. Mephistopheles. To this the devil himself can nothing add. 124 FAUSTUS. Baccalaukeus. Devil ? Devil there can be none without my willing. Mephistopheles (aside). The devil 's close by to trip you up, my lad. Baccalaureus {exultingly). This is the noble mission of the young — Earth into being at my bidding sprung; The sun in pomp I led up from the sea, The moon in all her changes followed me. For me in beauty walked the glorious day. The green earth blossomed to adorn my way. 'T was at my beck upon that primal night. The proud stars shed through heaven their spreading light. Rescued is Man, and by what hand but mine, From galling bondage of the Philistine ? I — for the Spirit speaks within me — freed Follow the inward light where it may lead. Fearless and fast, with rapture-beaming mind, The Clear before me, and the Dark behind. Mephistopheles. Original ! move onward in your pride. Oh 1 how the spirit would sink mortified. Could you but know that long ago All thoughts, whatever, dull or clever, FAUSTUS. 125 That cross the twilight of your brain, Have been o 'er and o 'er again Occupying other men. Yet, have no fears for him ; — in a few years The absurd works off, the ferment clears, The folly will subside, perhaps refine ; The must at last is wine, and no bad wine. [ To the younger part of the audience who do not applaud. Too bad to see the auditors so cold ! And yet I must forgive the young beholder His lack of sympathy. The devil is old. To understand him better, boys, grow older ! 126 FAUSTUS. Laboratory {in the fashion of the Middle Ages. Cumbrous, heavy apparatus for fantastic pur- JWagner {at the hearth). The bell ! how fearfully it chimed I With what a shudder, thrilling through These old walls, smoke-begrimed ! The agony of hopes and fears That tortured me is at an end. The cloudy darkness clears. From deep within the phial glows A living ring of fire, that throws Far its red light, and through the night, As from the carbuncle, in bright Lightning-like lustre flows. And now ! — and now ! — at last 't is come ! a pure clear pearly white ! Oh ! that I may not lose it this time — Hark ! Again ! A something rattling at the door. Mephistopheles {entering). Welcome ! I bring such luck as in my power. FAUSTUS. 127 Wagner {anxiously). Welcome ! To come just at the planet hour! {In a low voice.') Hush ! not a breath, while you look on intent. A mighty work of wonderful event Is at the moment of accomplishment — A man is being made! Mephistopheles (in a whisper). A man ! and will it Be soon done ? are your lovers in the skillet ? Wagner. Heaven help you ! the romance of action, passion. Father and mother, is quite out of fashion. I 've shown up pretty well that idle pother — The thought of child by no means implies mother : The tender point from which life sprang and started Is gone — clean gone — the glory all departed. The eager impulse from within that pressed. Received and gave, and, prompt to manifest Itself, went on advancing by degrees, The nearest first, the foreign next to seize, Is from its dignity deposed, dethroned, From this day forward, disallowed, disowned 128 FAUSTUS. No doubt the old views may still for the brute beast Answer, but man, high-gifted man at least, Will have a higher, purer form of birth. [^Turns to the hearth. Look yonder ! see the flashes from the hearth ! Hope for the world dawns there, that, having laid The stuff together of which man is made, The hundred-fold ingredients mixing, blending, (For upon mixture is the whole depending,) If then in a retort we slowly mull it, Next to a philosophic temper dull it, Distil and re-distil, at leisure thin it, All will come right, in silence, to a minute. [ Turning again to the hearth. 'T is forming, — every second brings it nearer — And my conviction becomes stronger, clearer. What Nature veils in mystery, I expect Through the plain understanding to effect ; What was organisation wiU at last Be with the art of making crystals classed. Mephistopheles. Who has lived long will never be surprised — Nothing in the world is new. I 've long ago Met, in my years of going to and fro And up and down in earth, men crystallised. FATISTUS. 129 Wagner {gazing intently on the phial). It forms! glows! gathers! in a moment more" The work 's accomplished never done before ! Broach an unfolded project, men suspect it, ScolT at it, as a madman's dream reject it ; We, in our turn, may laugh when the event Is placed beyond the reach of accident. Think of the thinker able to produce A brain to think with fit for instant use ! ( Gazing on the phial with complacency.') The glass rings low, the charming power that lives Within it makes the music that it gives. It dims ! it brightens ! it will shape itself. And see ! — a graceful dazzling little elf. He lives ! he moves ! spruce mannikin of fire. What more can we ? what more can earth desire ? Mystery is no longer mystery. Listen ! a sound ! a voice ! and soon will be Intelligible words addressed to me. HoMUNCULUs {in the phial, to Wagner). Ha ! father dear ! how goes it ? 't was no jest ; Clasp me afiectionately to your breast. Not quite so tight. So fervent an embrace Incurs the risk of breaking the glass case. Essentially distinct, the Natural Finds in the Universe no resting-place, The Artificial needs restricted space. 130 FAUSTUS. {To Mephistopheles.) Ha ! rascal ! my old cousin, are you here ? Good fellow at such moment to appear. What luck has brought you ? nothing could in fact Be timelier. While I am, I still must act ; I woald address myself to work at once, And you 're the very fellow for the nonce. Wagner. A word, just one short word : till now I blushed At my own ignorance, when thousands rushed Up to my chair, and young and old perplexed My brain with problems intricate and vexed ; As, for example, none can comprehend How soul and body in such union blend, Inseparably bound together they, Yet battling with each other every day. So then— ^ Mephistopheles. A moment ! pray, resolve the doubt. How happens it that man and wife fall out ? On this, my friend, we '11 get no satisfaction. Here 's work to do we had better set about : The little fellow 's attribute is action, HOMUNCXJLUS. What 's to be done ? FAUSTUS. 131 Mephistopheles {pointing to a side-door). Thy talents here employ. Wagnee {still looking into the phial). Thou art indeed a very lovely boy ! [ The side-door opens. Faustus seen stretched on a couch. The phial slips from Wagner's hands, hovers over Faustus, and shines on him. HOMUNCULUS. Expressive ! — Lovely scenery all around ! A clear lake in the dusk grove's deep recess ; Nymphs playfully that to the water press ; And — what a pretty picture ! — they undress. Well ! that 's not bad ; and near the lake's green bound, Distinct from all, that countenance divine ! — To look on her is to adore and love. Daughter seems she of old heroic line. Or of the children of the Gods above. Her foot she dips into the light serene Of the waves' trembling crystal, cools the flame Of life that glows through all that noble frame. But what a rush and rustle of quick wings. With splash and crash through the smooth mirror rings ! The maidens fly in terror ; but the Queen k2 132 FAUSTUS. In womanly composure smiles to see The prince of swans wind gently to her knee, Nestling up to her — how familiarly ! Bold suitor, not to be denied is he ! — ^But suddenly a rising vapour draws A curtain close of thick-inwoven gauze, Hiding the loveliest scene. Mephistopheles. Why, what a world in all you do relate ! For such a little fellow, you 're a great Romancer — visionary, rather. I See nothing. HOMUNCULtrS. That I do believe, for why. You 're a born northern, born in a bleak clime ; And in the dreariest, blackest hour of time. On the shapeless gloom of the dark ages flung ; And you in youth have been brought up among Eitters and priests : how could your eye be free? 'T is only in the dark that you can see. {Looking around.') Blocks of brown stone ! vaults mouldering, dripping wall, Zigzags, fantastic arches, low and small ! Into another scrape we shall have got ; Should he wake here, he dies upon the spot. Wood-lake, and swans, and solitary stream. FAUST0S. 133 And river-nymphs that from the waters gleam, And Hope and Love, are his entrancing dream. How could he to this den be reconciled ? Even I, that am as cheerful as a child, And suit myself to all things, scarce can bear This dungeon. Off with him ! Mbphistopheles. Aye off — ^but where ? HOMUNCULUS. Command the warrior to the field of fight, Lead to the dance the maiden, and all 's right ; And luckily — it just occurs to me — To-night 's the Classical Walpuegis Night : Cannot imagine a more apt event — It brings him to his very element. Mephistophelks. I 've never heard of it. What can it be ? HoMUNCULUS. How could it ever have come to your ears ! Romantic spectres are your all in all ! The genuine are also Classical. Mbphistopheles. But to what point of the compass sail we now For this land of my old-world kinsmen ? I somehow 134 FAirsTus. Fancy with them that I shall never take — 'T is an acquaintance I 've no wish to make. HoMUJsrctiLUS. North-western, Satan, lies thy pleasure ground ; 'T is to the south-east we to-night are bound. Through a wide valley flows Peneios free. In quiet creeks embowered with bush and tree ; The valley to the mountain glens lies spread With old and new Pharsalus overhead. Mephistopheles. Pharsalus! do not speak of it, — the strife Of Slave and Despot sickens me of life — There is no end of it. A battle won Does nothing ; 't is but a campaign begun ; While Asmodaeus — this none calls to mind — Still goads them on, and mocks them from behind. They fight, they say, where Freedom's banner waves : Seen truly, 't is a war of slaves with slaves. HOMUNCULTIS. Leave them to wrangle on. Man's nature and Condition everlasting war demand ; Each has to guard himself as best he can From boyhood up, and so grows into man. But that's for them, not us. The matter now Before us is to cure this man — but how ? If you have any remedy, apply it ; If you have none, then there 's mine, let me try it. FAUSTUS. 135 Mbphistopheles. Oh ! I know many a charm and Brocken spell Should in a common case soon have him well ; But here, where Heathen bolts resist, repel, I can do nothing. These Greeks never were Worth any thing ; yet do they dazzle you With the free play of the senses, that so wins The human breast, and lures to cheerful sins. Ours are of soberer cast and graver hue ; And now HOMUNCULUS. 'T was not your habit to be coy ; You '11 find Thessalian witches there, my boy ! Mbphistopheles. Thessalian witches ! They are persons whom I have been asking after. I wish to Make their acquaintance — just an interview ; Night after night with them would never do. It were, I fancy, dreary merriment But for a visit — but for an experiment. HOMDNCULUS. The mantle — trot him out— 'tis good strong stuff, And carries double — 't will do well enough ; Come wrap the ritter in it, neck and feet. Off with us ! Here, leap up into your seat — Here, catch the skirt ; I '11 light you on your way. 136 FACSTUS. Wagnek. And I HOMUNCTTLUS. And You — oh ! you at home may stay, The main pursuit of life, as now, pursuing. Spread the old parchments out as you are doing ; The scattered elements of life collect. Combine them as the recipes direct ; In nothing from theSletter deviate thou : Think of the * what,' but still more of the ' how ;' While o'er a section of the world I fly, To hit, perhaps, the dot upon the ' i.' The triumph 's won, the mighty work attained. The well-earned meed of thousand efforts gained ; Gold, honour, reputation, long life, health, — Science, perhaps, and virtue — surely wealth. Farewell ! Wagneh. Farewell ! The cold word chills my heart : Never to meet again, I feel, we part. Mephistopheles. Away we go ! swift to Peneios tend ! There 's something in my bright young cousin's aid. ( To the Spectators confidentially.') In the end, we all depend On the creatures we have made ! FAUSTUS. 137 CLASSICAL WALPUEGIS NIGHT. Phaesalian Fields — Darkness. Eeichtho. To this night's shuddering festival, as oftentimes ere now, Once more I come, once more, Ebichtho, I the gloomy, Not quite the hideous hag o'erslandering poets picture — Their praise and blame is ever in the Infinite. Already o'er the vale, in shadowy undulation. Roll glimmering before mine ey6 what seem to be gray tents, Spread wavelike far and wide : phanitomy reappear- ance Of that all-anxious night — dread night of deepest sorrow. How oft doth it repeat itself! — how oft to be repeated ! Evermore and for ever ! None of his own free will 138 FAUSTUS. Yields empire to another ; none to him Who by strength gained it, who by strength would govern. Who cannot rule his inner self would fain his neighbour's will Strain to the stubborn measure of his own proud thoughts. In these fields, by armed hosts, in conflict and in conquest, Memorably was it exemplified. Force 'gainst superior force for mortal strife is marshalled ; Freedom's fair wreath, rich with its thousand flowers, Breaks. The stiff laurel bends to crown the ruler's brow. Here Magnus saw in dreams the unforgotten day Of earlier greatness spreading into glorious blos- som; C^SAE lay sleepless there, and watched the wavering balance — And they will measure strengths. The world knows who prevailed. Watchfires burn bright, diffusing their red beams around — The soil breathes up, in crimson stain, blood, out- poured here of old : FAUSTUS. 139 And by its strange glare, streaming far thro' the night's magic brightness, Allured, the legion gathers of Hellenic story. Round every fire flit with uncertain glimmer, Or rest at ease, some of the fabulous shapings Of the days of old. The moon, not yet at full, But bright, uprising now spreads over all A softening lustre mild. The phantom tents Are gone. Illusion fades off. Fires burn blue. But over me what a strange sudden Meteor ! It guides, and with its light illumes, a ball Corporeal. I scent life ! 't would iU. beseem Me, to life noxious, to be near the living. 'T would bring me ill repute, and profit me Nothing. Already it sinks down. 'T will land Here. Ere it touch the ground I move away. [_Exit. Moonlight. Homtjnctjlus, Mephistopheles, Grif- fins, Colossal Ants, Abimaspians, Sphinxes, Sirens, &c. The Aeronauts seen above, before they have descended. HOMUNCULUS. Sweep o'er flames and sights of horror Once again in circling flight ! Spectral shapes through gorge and valley Flit in the phantasmal light. 140 FAUSTUS. Mephistophbles. Spectres, hideous as the phantoms That I gazed on from the gloom Of that drear old Northern window ! Here I feel almost at home. HOMUNCTJLTJS. See, with rapid steps before us, A tall female figure stride ! Mephistophbles. As through air she saw us gliding. She retreated terrified. HOMUNCULUS. Let her stride on ! think not of her ! Set the ritter on the ground ; Here in the charmed land of Fable, Will the life he seeks be found. [ They descend. FAtrsTtrs {touching the ground). Where is She ? HoMUNCULUS. That I cannot say ; But here would seem the very place t' inquire. No time to lose ! from fire to fire. Pursue the chase till break of day. He, who has dared the adventure of the Mothers, Has little reason to fear any others. FAUSTUS. 141 Mephistopheles. I 've my own objects here, and our best play. It sti-ikes me, for the good of us all three, Is that each take his own course, and that we Among the fires, as fancy guides us, stray. 'T is so much pleasanter when one pursues His own adventures just as he may choose. And, small chap, when 't is time to reunite. Let chime your glass, let flare and flash your light. HoMUNCDLUS {the glass rings and shines out wonderfully). Thus shall it ring — thus flash forth ray on ray. Now to the scene of wonders haste away! [ They separate. Fadstds {alone). Where is She ? why ask where ? If it be not the sod, on which her feet Trod, and the wave that beat To welcome her, it is the air That spoke her language. Here ! and I am here — In her own Greece, miraculously here ! I felt at once the earth on which I stood — In sleep there came a Spirit that through my blood 142 FAUSTUS. Poured, as it were, the fire of burning levin. Now, like AntsBus, as I touch the ground, I find the strength of inspiration given, Eoam this wild maze of fires with happy cheer Where all things strangest are together found. [ Withdraws. Mephistopheles {prying abouf). At every step, as 'mong these fires I roam, I find myself still less and less at home. What an odd crowd of creatures brought to- gether! — Bird's claws, dog's paws, men's faces, fleece, fur, feather. Their decency is little sure to brag on — Most of them naked ! here and there a rag on ! The Sphinxes unabashed, the Griffins shameless. Making no secret of what should be nameless. We all are rakes at heart — each likes a touch of it ; But the Antique, to my taste, has too much of it : It is too life-like — dealers with old story Are never at a loss for allegory. And so with the Antique, we too should cover it. Find one thing or another to paste over it. A nasty set, I '11 never know them rightly; A stranger should, however, speak politely. Hail ! Ladies fair ! Hail ! Very Eeverend Gray-beards ! FAUSTUS. 143 GEirriNS {gruffly). What ! means the fellow to offend ? Gray beard, or Gray bird, what does he think to say? My name is Griffin— do not call me Gray : Geat ! bird or beast, none likes to be called Geat. Gray-beard, forsooth ! However far they range, Words ring their origin in every change ; In 'gray,' ' grief,' 'graveyard,' 'grim,' and each such sound, The thought, etymologically bound. Offends, puts the best temper out of tune. Mbphistopheles. And yet, not to give in to you too soon. The ' gri ' in Griffin, your own honoured name. Is not unpleasing. Geiffins (m the same tone). Aye, and for the same Reason; the kindred thought you still can trace — Our ' gri ' is grip or grasp — we grasp at place And honours, grasp at kingdoms, girls and gold : , Nor we alone — though some affect to blame. In practice 't is the universal game. Fortune still aids the Geiffin, Grasper bold. 144 FAUSTCS. Colossal Ants. Gold ! — Said you Gold ? laboriously we plied, And heaps of it had grubbed, and sought to hide In cave and crannied rock far out of sight; Our hoarded gold the Aeimaspians eyed. Made off with it — and, proud of their success, Look at them laughing there at our distress ! Geifpins. Be at ease — we '11 bring the rascals to confession. Akmaspians. But not to-night ; not this free festival night : Ours for the nonce is undisturbed possession, And ere the morning 't will have vanished quite. Mephistopheles (who has placed himself between the Sphinxes). Here is a spot that I can cotton to ! At home quite, — I so understand them all ! Sphinxes. We breathe our Spirit tones — ^by tou They are made Corporeal. By and bye we may know something more of you; But now just tell us what 's your name ? pray do. FAUSTljS. 143 Mephistopheles. Name ? Men are fond of giving names to me, And thus it is I 've many a name. Let 's see — Are any Bi;itons here ? No doubt there are, And they will vouch for me. They travel far To visit fields of battle, waterfalls, Your dreary classic ruins, broken walls. This were the very place for such as they ; They will bear witness how in the old play They saw me there as Old Iniquity. Sphinx. Why so called ? Mephistopheles. 'T is a mystery to me. Sphinx. Likely enough. Know you anything of the power Of the stars ? What says the aspect of the hour ? Mephistopheles {looking up). Star after star shoots fast and far, and bright And sharp shines down the crescent moon to-night. Here in this comfortable spot and snug, I'll nestle close to your warm lion-rug: Go farther and fare worse. — To climb up would Be dangerous, in no case do much good. Out with a riddle — I 've some small skill in Riddles — or tip me a charade, — begin, L 146 FAUSTUS. Sphinx. Thyself — take that — there were a riddle indeed. The strange enigma shall we try to read ? ' Needful alike to good man and to badi Target, the ascetic's zeal to test and prove, Accomplice in mad projects of the mad, At all times nothing but a jest to Jove ?' First Griffin {snarling). I do not like him — what a face ! Second Griffin (snarling more gruffly). The rascal does not know his place ; He 's none of ours — what brings him here ? Both. A vile beast ! — ^nothing good, I fear. Mephistopheles {brutally). Aye, pretty treatment of a guest, because You think his nails can't scrape like your sharp claws. Let 's try them. Sphinx {mildly). If you like it, you may stay; But you '11 be off soon — are on thorns to go; — And yet such suitor for a lady's grace Is pretty sure at home to make his way. Here you seem out of spirits, out of place. t FAtrsTiis. 1 47 Mephistopheles. I 'm half in love, — admire your upper show Of woman, — shudder at the Beast below. Sphinx. Liar ! for this you '11 suffer — scoffing thus — Our claws are sound and sharp, we 'd have you know — The shrivelled horse-shank ! he ! too good for us ! [SiKENS are heard preluding from above. Mephistopheles. And the Birds yonder on the poplar bough That rock them to and fro, say, what are they ? Sphtnx. Beware ! beware ! — the Sieex's song ere now Hath lured the wisest and the best away. Sirens {singing). Where no Beauty is, why linger ? 'Mong these strange shapes wherefore dwell ? Listen! — hither, grouped together. We have come, and time our voices As beseemeth Sirens well. Sphinxes {mocking and mimicking them\ Force them from the branches green, Where their falcon claws they screen; L 2 148 FAUSTUS. Fear to lend a listening ear To their song! their talons fear ! SlEENS. Hate and Envy — ^hence begone ! All the joys, that Nature scatters Over earth and over waters, Ours to gather into one. Ever in our welcomings Still is seen the best, the ' gayest. Happiest attitude of things.'* Mbphistopheles (mimicking) These are their new and pretty things. From the throat and from the strings Tone round tone still winds and weaves. This thrilling is all lost on me, Tickles the ear, — the heart, left free, Nothing of the song receives. Sphinxes. Heart ! why a leathern bag fills up the place Of heart with you, as shrivelled as your face ! Faustus {stepping forwardy How wonderful all here ! Strange spectacle ! But not unpleasing — nay, it augurs well. * Akenside. FAUSTUS. 149 In these repulsive aspects, oh, what vast Features of power t what alien grandeur massed ! Gazing on them, my hopes anticipate, And feel even now a favourable fate. To what far distant days— what far-off lands This deep glance bears me ! — {Pointing to the Sphinxes.) Before such as these (Edipus stood — And before such as these (Pointing to the Sirens.) Ulysses crouched him down in hempen bands. ( To the Colossal Ants.) Such were the far-famed gatherers of gold ! ( To the Griffins.) These guarded it in firm and faithful hold. New life thrills through me as I gaze on these. Forms ! Oh, how grand ! — How grand the Memo- ries! Mephistopheles. Such erewhile you 'd have scouted; but at present They seem to you delectable and pleasant. When a man 's amorous, and has in chase The girl he wants, no monster's out of place. Fawstus {to the Sphinxes). Shapes, that seem Woman, Ye must answer me : Have any of you seen Helen ? Where is She? 1 50 FAUSTUS. Sphinxes. Seen Helen ? — ^we ? We reach not to her days. The last of us was killed by Hercules. From Cheiron you, perhaps, may make it out ; He 's pretty surely galloping about In this wild spirit-night ; — catch him who can — It is no easy task : but he 's your man. Sirens. Oh, go not from us ! — go not from us ! Heed not what old fablers say Of Ulysses onward speeding From the Sirens of the bay. With us he, in sweet repose, Loitered long, and legends many Had we of the times of Troy. All to thee will we disclose, All confide to thee with joy. Dearer thou to us than any ! Come! oh, come! the glad green sea Longs, with us, to welcome thee ! Sphinxes. Oh ! let them not delude thy noble mind. As ropes Ulysses, let our counsel bind Thee ! If the mighty Cheiron thou dost find, 'T will prove us right. [.Exit Faustus. FAUSTDS. 151 Mephistopheles {fretfully). What's that croaks by in flapping flight? 'T is gone too quick to catch the sight ! One — two — three — ten, — like shadows past, — Who thinks to catch them must fly fast. Sphinxes. Swift as the winter tempest these, Swift as the darts of Hercules ; They are the Stymphalides. Their vulture-beak and gander-foot Look well; but that is as one thinks. Their croak is meant for a salute. These Croakers say they 're cousins : count the links Between them and the family of Sphinx. Mephistopheles {seeming terrified). Beside the Croakers, there 's some other stuff, Hissing abominably-. Sphinx, Like enough. You — scared at hissing! — nothing, sure, in this. They 're always hissing who can only hiss. These are the heads of the Lernsean snake, Cut from the main stump off. What airs they take On the strengthof the separation!— shine as proudly As the old serpent, and they hiss as loudly. 152 TAUSTUS. But what are you now about ? This restlessness, These gestures of such comical distress ! What do you want, what is't you would express? OflF with you ! How his neck turns round awry — Oh! now I see what has so caught his eye. Don't think of us. He's off! They're pretty faces, No doubt of it; but have done with these grimaces. The group of Lami.®— smart girls — no great matter Of beauty — bold fronts — ^red lips — smiles that flatter, And looks that have allurements for a Satyr. The goat-foot's sure to win such ladies' grace. MaPHISTOPHELES. When I return shall you be in this place ? Sphinx. Thou and they may sport and play, — Airy shapes, that pass away; From Egypt we — and one of us is known For a full thousand years on the same throne. On our position fix your earnest gaze ; We rule the Lunar — rule the Solar days. We sit before the Pyramids, we see Judgment done upon the Nations, War, and Peace, and Inundations. Change of feature none know We. FAUSTUS. 153 Scene changes. The Peneios surrounded by Waters and Nymphs. Peneios, Faustus, Nymphs, Cheikon, Manto. Peneios. Lull me still with thy faint whispers. Soft sedge ! sister reeds, sigh low ! Willow, wave with langourous breathing ! Poplars, ye, that tremble so. Rocking still beside my stream, Murmur back my broken dream ! A thick dense heat — a shudder dread, Secret, through all nature spread. Wakes me in my rolling bed. Faustus. Is it that my ear deceives ? Sure I heard behind the leaves Other sounds than of the stream, That like human accents seem : Tittering among the trees — Prattling ripple — laughing breeze. Nymphs {singing). Weary and way-sore, Oh ! were it not best, In the cool, for the tired limbs To lie down and rest ? 154 FAUSTUS. To lie down, enjoying The rest that would fly thee, Enjoying the rest That the world would deny thee ; , While we lull thee, and soothe thee, And linger close by thee. Faustus. Awake — I am awake — ^yes, yes ! I am awake! Fade not away. Fair forms ! but still pursue your play Where my eye yonder shapes the scene. Dreams are they ? — are they memories ? How strange the feeling ! All that is Seems as though it before had been. Where the cool bowering copse-wood weaves Its dance of agitated leaves, I hear — scarce hear — the water's flow ! From all sides round, in hundred rills. It ripples down, unites and fills A clear bright space below, Where, in a pure bed, nothing deep. The crystal currents have their sleep. Nymphs bathing, — and from the moist glass we see, Amused, of sleek young limbs the double gleam. FATJSTUS. 155 Grouped, swimming boldly, wading timidly. Hark ! splash of water ; laugh, and shriek, and scream ! This were enough to satisfy And charm the fascinated eye ; But the sense onward, onward still would press. Would pierce with searching glance the screen Of the rich bower, whose green recess Conceals the lofty Queen. Strange ! very strange ! and swans, swans too are here ! Majestically borne from cove and creek. In slumber-seeming motion on they steer. Companionable, kindly ; but what pride ! Contemplating the softened image of Breast snow-white, stately head, and arching neck, As though with their own lovely forms in love, O'er the still mirror peacefully they glide. And one before the rest, Bold with expanded breast. Moves with imperial dignity and grace : His feathers, roughed out wide — wave on the waves — Thro' snowy foam that his white plumage laves. He presses to the dear, the dedicated place. 156 TAUSTDS. And see the rest — reposing light illumes, While to and fro they float, their tranquil plumes. And lo ! they rouse them ; see ! the splendid strife: Fain would they chase away these maidens coy. Whose mistress, can she nowtheir thoughts employ? Their one thought is security — is life ! NYMPHS. Sisters, listen ! lay your ear To the river's green marge here. Do I hear, or do I dream, Sound of horses' hoofs that seem Swift as of a courier's flight Bringing tidings of the night ? FAUSTUS. Shocks, as of leaping thunder ! Earth! will it spring asunder? Nearer and nearer now, and ringing loud Under the quick feet of a courser proud. Thither, mine eye, glance thither! Favouring Fate! Is it to be ? Am I the Fortunate ? Wonder unparalleled ! and will it be ? A rider gallops hither. In his air What courage ! what intelligence is there ! Borne by a courser white — blindingly bright. I err not ; 't is no mockery of the sight. It is, it is the son of Philyra. Halt, Cheieon ! halt I I have mucli to say to thee. I'AUSTUS. 157 Chkieon. What say'st ? what is 't ? I rest not. Faustus. A moment check thy pace. Cheiron. Faustus. Take me. Cheikon. Up! then. As we race, You may give me the happiness of knowing What you 're about, and which way you are going. We 're on the bank ; I 'II take you 'cross the river. Faustus. Oh ! as for that, I '11 go whithersoever You go. And I must thank thee evermore. Noblest of men, whose fame 't is to have taught The Heroes of the glorious days of yore, The Poet's world of Chief and Argonaut. Cheieon. Pass over that — Pallas's own success When she played Mentor could not well be less. 'T is little matter what is taught, men will. Taught or untaught, go on the same way still. 158 FAUSTUS. Faustus. Physician, learned in names of herbs and fruits, Who to the very deepest knowest all roots ; Wounds thou dost mitigate, and sick men cheer, Tn Spirit and in Body art thou here ? Cheieon. Was a man wounded, I was in a trice Upon the field with aid and with advice. What I did, much or little, anyhow The herb-women and priests inherit now. Faustus. There spoke the genuine great man, who disclaims Peculiar merit in his acts or aims ; And though of all in every way the best, 'Gainst any praise still enters his protest. Chebkon. You seem to me a flatterer of skill, A practised hand in winding at your will People and prince. Faustus. But, tell me, — you have seen The great men of your time, and you have!^been Rival, in everything that wins man's praise Of the very noblest, didst live out thy days True Hero, Demigod, — say in thy thoughts ' TAUSTUS. 159 Who of all, that thou now rememberest, Then figuring on earth 'mong men, seemed best. Cheieon. In the high circle of the Argonauts," Each, as the soul breathed power, distinction held ; Each in his own peculiar path excelled. The DioscBKi brothers won their way Where youthful bloom and manly beauty sway ; In the BoEEADES, for others' weal . Sprang instant action from determined zeal. A thoughtful man, strong, energetic, clear, Such was Prince Jason, to the ladies dear. And tender Orpheus swayed the lyre — calm heart Was his — and his true miracles of art. Sharp-sighted Lynceus, he by day and dark. Through rock and strand steered safe the holy bark. In danger's hour true brotherhood is shown, Each works, and all praise each. Each works alone. Faustus. Will you say nothing then of Heecules ? Cheiron. Oh ! call not back that feeling, wake thou not The longing for the old days that have been. Phcebus or Hermes I had never seen. Or Ares, or the rest ; in Hercules The god-like stood before these eyes of mine Impersonated — all that of divine 160 FAUSTUS. In dreams of heaven man's fancy hath conceived. All the mind imaged or the heart believed ! A king by Nature made. What dignity In youth's first bloom ! — How gentle, too, was he ! Gave to his elder brother service true. And loved the ladies with devotion due. Son such as he will never more be given By Earth for Hebe to lead up to heaven ; Songs all in vain to make him known, Would strive, and sculptors torture stone. Faustus. Never did sculptor, labour as he might. Bring out such perfect image to the sight Of that imperial look, that god-like mind. But now that the most beautiful of men You thus have showed me, try your hand again With the most beautiful of womankind. Cheikon. What ? Woman's Beauty J — The words, thus combined, Seem meaningless, — the shape of faultless mould Too often a stiff image, marble-cold. Only the Being, whose glad life flows free. And sheds around it the perpetual cheer Of joyousness, hath interest for me. The Beautiful in its own placid sphere Rests all apart. Grace charms resistlessly, As Helen, when I carried her, and she FAUSTUS. 161 Fadstus. Tou — carried — her ? Cheteon. Yes — I — upon this back. Fatjstus. Was there not hitherto perplexity Enough ? What more ? — ^here sitting where she sate. Cheieon. She grasped into my hair, as you do new. Faustos. My brain whirls round — oh ! tell me when and how It was. She is my sole desire ; say when And whence, and whither, whither ? Cheieon. The Dioscuri brothers had just freed Their little sister from the spoiler's hand ; And now upon their homeward road they speed. Again the robbers pluck up courage, and The brothers, with whom Helena then was. Would clear Eleusis' swamp in rapid flight : They waded, and I, pawing, swam across. Then sprang she off, and my moist mane she smoothed, Patted me with her fondling hand, and soothed. 162 FATJSTDS. And then she thanked me, and with such address, Such self-possession, such oalm consciousness ! She was, — how charming ! — young and the delight Of the aged. Fatjstus. Then just seven years old, not quite Seven. Cheieon. What ! the philologues have been with you, Puzzling your brains, themselves deceiving too ; Tour Mythologic lady has no age. Is from her very birth-time all the rage. Like nothing but herself : in childhood carried By spoilers off — recovered — wooed — won — mar- . ried. Years but increase her charms, bring lovers plenty; She 's never old — nay, never comes to twenty. Lovely, and to be loved! The Poet seizes The fair form and does with her what he pleases. The Poet is not bound by time or distance. Faustus. Time for her ! time then can have no existence. And so Achilles found her — Time the while Ceasing to be — on Leuke's lonely isle. Strange hap was theirs of blissful ecstacy — Love wrung from unrelenting Destiny ! FAUSTUS. 163 And would my powerful longings, all in vain, ~ Charm into life that deathless form again Eternal as the gods ? Yes ! Gentleness And winning Grace are hers, and not the less Hers the calm sway of Dignity serene. You saw long since whom I to-day have seen. And She is Beautiful. 'TIs not the spell, 'Tis not the spell of Gracefulness alone — 'Tis Beauty, Beauty irresistible ! We see, we love, we long to make our own. With her enraptured Soul, Sense, Being twine — I have no life if Helen be not mine. Cheikon. Stranger ! this rapture men would call the flame Of Love ; with Spirits madness is its name. 'T is lucky that the fit has seized you here, And on this night, of all nights of the year; It is my wont each year, upon this night, For one short moment in my circling flight. To visit Manto, JEsculapius' child. Who in her father's temple, priestess there, Still lifts her supplicating hands in prayer, That he illumine the physician's mind. And from their rash destroyers save mankind — The best loved of the sibyls' guild ; no wild Mad raving there, but ever good and mild. Health will come soon from simples of the field Applied by her. 212 164 FAtrsTus. Faxtstus. But I would not be healed; My mind is now all-powerful. Dispossessed I sink to man, no better than the rest. Cheieon. In the noble fount is healing — scorn it not. Now, down ! Down quickly ! we are at the spot. FAtrsTUS. Whither hast brought me in th^ray of night, Landing me in the plash and pebbles here ? Cheieon. See ! on the left Olympus. On the right Peneios. Here strove Rome and Greece in fight ; A mighty kingdom melts in sand away — The Monarch's flight — the Burgher's triumph-day. The Eternal Temple resting in the clear Light of the moon stands out — ^how very near! Manto {dreaming, from within). This a. something doth import. Threshold rings, and temple-court, Horses' footfalls echoing. Demigods are entering. Cheieon. AU 's right! Open your eyes, and see all's right. FAUSTUS. 165 Manto (awaking). Welcome ! I see you have not missed the night. Cheieon. Unfallen still stands your ancient temple-home ! Manto. Unweariable you still range and roam ! Cheieon. You rest in changeless bower of quiet deep, And / in everlasting circuit sweep. Manto. I tarry — round Me still wheels rolling Time. But — this man Cheieon. The mad night hath seized him in Its whirls, up flung him in its sludge and slime ; And Helen — madman — Helen he would win, And knows not how or where he should begin. With ^sculapian aid he may do well. Manto. I love him who desires th' Impossible. [Cheieon is already far off. Manto {to Faustus). Onward! Adventurous! with joy proceed ! Enter in boldly ! Down the dark path speed 166 fAtrsTUS. Whose windings to Persephoneia lead Beneath Olympus, where with longing eyes She seeks the smile of interdicted skies. There did I smuggle Orpheus in of old. Fare better thou ! Be Fortunate! Be Bold ! [ They descend. FAusTrrs. 167 The Uppek Peneios, as before. SiEENS, Seismos, Sphinxes, Geifpins, Ants, Pygmies, Dactyls, Ceanes op Ibycus, &c. SlEENS. Dash we into the Peneios, Swim we with him down in glee. With the charm of song inviting All to seek the spreading sea. There be those who will not listen — Hapless ! yet with song we call. To the Festival of Ocean, To the healing waters, all. Were we there, oh! with what rapture Would we raise our lofty Psean ; In the wave is every blessing — Come with us to the JEgean. \_Earthquake. Waves foam back to the spring-head. Nor stream, as wont, down the river's bed ; The trembling ground starts and recoils, And the tainted water boils. The gritty bank swells. Moisture soaks Thro' pebbly sand. 'T will burst ! — it smokes ! Fly hence! all, all — oh ! fly we hence; This wonder-work of violence 168 rATjSTUs. Bodes good to none — is an offence To Nature's Truth. Fly hence ! fly hence ! Come, joyous noble guests — come ye To the glad Feast of the Sea, Where tremulously wavelets shine, And swelling lap the white sea-line ; Above, below, in double glow. In sky and sea smiles Luna calm. And sheds in dew her holy balm. Yonder is Movement ! — Freedom ! Life ! Here, Suffering and Constraint and Strife : The throes of agonising earth In travail with a monstrous birth. AU that are prudent, fly apace; There is a horror o'er the place. Seismos {sfill in the depths of the earth, struggling upward ; and grumbling ; his voice makes itself heard). 0ne shove more — one shove will do it ; JPut but sides and shoulders to it; One tug more and I am through it. Thus I tear my way before me. Sure to rise o'er all that 's o'er me. One tug more — another shove now : I am in the world above now. {^Appears as described. FAUSTUS. 169 Sphinxes. What a shudder ! what a taking Earth must be in — trembling, quaking ! What a going 'gainst the grain! What a struggle, stress, and strain ! What a rocking, what a wringing ! Back and forward, swaying, swinging ! But we '11 keep the post we 've taken. Though all round about be shaken, Though aU Hell in horror break in. And behold a vault ascending ! Wonderful!— 'tis He! 'tis He! 'T is the Old Man of the Sea ! He, who built amid the foam — Ocean's bed before him rending— Delos, the bright island-home. That, when earth denied all other Shelter to a wandering mother, There her sorrows might have ending. He with striving, squeezing, driving, Arms extending, broad back bending, Very Atlas in his gesture. Tears his way thro' earth's green vesture, Carries with him in his travel Land and sand, and grit and gravel ; AU that hitherto was sleeping. An unbroken quiet keeping, 170 FAUSTUS. In the river bed at rest, Or upon the valley's breast. TJnfatigued and still defiant, See the Caryatid giant ! Loads of stony scaffolding To his sides and shoulders cling. From his subterranean prison One half of him up hath risen. Now this is going too far — this must end, The Sphinxes their position must defend. Seismos. I 've done it all alone — 't was my sole act. They now believe — they 've seen me in the fact. Had I not toiled and tugged with push and pull, Would the world have been half so beautiful ? The mountain-summit's pure ethereal blue, That, as from some enchanted heaven above. So smiles upon the raptured painter's view; Where would it be, did I not shake and shove ? My proud progenitors were looking on — Swart Night and Chaos gloried in their son — As in my strength, I, 'mong the Titans tall, With Pelion played and Ossa, as at ball. We then were young, and, as young blood inspired. We raved and raged. At last, like children tiredj In half-malicious mirth the hills we clap Upon Parnassus-head — a double cap. PAUSTUS. 171 And there Apollo lingers with his lyre, Or listens, as the Muses sing in choir. Even Jove's high stretcher I it was heaved out, Where his loose thunder-bolts lie strewn about. And now, with might and main, with stress and strain, I haste head-foremost from the depths again. In upper air have worked myself a place, And shout out for some animated race Of occupants — and doubtless not in vain — With joyance and new life to people the new space. Sphinxes. We might have thought him one of the true stock Of the primitive old Hills — a real Rock — ■ Had we not seen the struggles of his birth, As the poor upstart wriggled out of earth. Now bushy woods come clothing his gaunt sides — '■ Stone pressing upon stone his bald pate hides. But what care we ? — the intruder must retreat — : The Sphinx will never yield her holy seat. Gkipfins. Gold in leaflet — gold in glitter — Take good care that thieves get none of it ; Through the chinks I see it glitter : Up ! ye Emmets, make your own of it. 172 FAUSTUS. Chorus of Ants. Gifints, with shattering Strength, have up sped it ; Little feet pattering Joyously tread it. O'er the hill, in and out, Tiny things many Wander in groups about Fissure and cranny. Swifter come — swifter come. Each chink has in it Rich gold in every crumb : Hasten to win it. Loiter and linger not ; Hasten to snatch it ; The treasure is yours If you only can catch it. Be earnest — be active — Come quick to the fountain Of wealth — seize the gold, And good-bye to the mountain ! Geiffins. In with the gold ! In with it ! — swell the heap ! We '11 lay our claws upon 't — the best bolts they : I warrant safe the treasure that they keep. PAUSTUS. 173 Pygmies. We're here — we have our place. We cannot say How it came to be, but so it is. Ask not Whence 't is we came — here we are, on the spot, Here undeniably. And here and there, Where'er there is but room to breathe — where'er Tou find a region meet for joyous life. If but a rocky crevice shows itself. Up springs your dwarf ; and with the tiny elf Be sure ere long to find his tiny wife. The active little man, the dwarfess fair, You find them here, and there, and everywhere ; Diligent little people — pair and pair. I do not know if things in the old day Went on in Paradise the self-same way ; That here they do so happily we know. And thank our stars delighted that 't is so. Life, joyous life, everywhere, east and west. Springs evermore from Earth's maternal breast. Dacttls. In one creative night, if Earth Hath brought these little things to birth, Be sure the same life-giving power To lesser folk will lend their hour. Who, led by the same law of kind. Will everywhere fit partners find. 174 TATJSTUS. Eldest or the Ptgmies. 'T is a time of Peace, and therefore The true moment to prepare for War. Then build the smithy! heap on Coals ! and cuirass shape and weapon ! All our vassals should be arming. Come, ye Emmets, hither swarming ; Come, in thousands come, and with ye Bring the metals for the smithy. Dactyxs, come with logs and tinder ; Come with coals, and coke, and cinder. Generalissimo. Stand together in a row, Fix the arrow, strain the bow ; Aim, secure and steady, take At the Herons of the lake. Nestling high, how proud they seem ! And their plumes, how bright they gleam ! Slay them — lay the proud ones low; Fix the arrow, strain the bow ; Stand together, one and aU. Darts fly thick, and thousands fall. Wide waving o'er our helmets shall the crest Of heron-plumes the victory attest. Emmets and Dactyls. None now to rescue — all resistance vain. We knead the iron, and they forge the chain. FAUSTUS. 175 We are and must be Slaves— Oppressors they ; And helpless we, but hope a better day, And till it's dawn, repine, but must obey. The Ckanes of ibtcus. Dying wail ! and the insulting Cry of murderers exulting I Wings in torture agonising Quiver — anguish of the dying ! Shrieks of pain from earth are rising To the heights where we are flying. Mingled all in one fell slaughter, Reddening with their blood the water ! Self-conceit, and the ambition To affect a high condition. And reduce to servile homage Brother dwarflings, brought these troubles, Led the mannikin land-nobles To the murder, for their plumage. Of the Herons. See, it waves there O'er the helms of the proud slaves there. Paunchy, bandy-legged, and crooked. Come with beaks and talons hooked. Ye that of our army be. Heron- wanderers of the sea ; 176 FAUSTtlS. Come, as Nature bids, with engines Nature gives, awake to vengeance. They have slain your near relations. Soot their name from out the nations ; Give no quarter — show no favour — Boot the rascals out for ever. l^Disperse, croaking in the air. FAUSTUS. 177 Scene changes to the low ground. Mephistopheles, Lamue, Obead, Homuncultjs. Mephistopheles (alone). The Northern hags at -will I wind about, — These Foreign Spirits put one sadly out. The Blocksbeeg is firm ground where'er you stray, And well defined — you cannot lose your way ; Frau Ilsb at her stone is watching still, And Heineich cheers you from his faithful hill ; The ScHNAECHEES growl and snarl, and Elend hears No change to speak of for a thousand years. Here, who can say if he moves swift or slow. When the ground boils and bubbles from below ? On a smooth field you take a quiet stroll, When — thump ! — behind, a mountain will uproU Its waves : 't is scarce a mountain — but of height Enough to screen me from the Sphinxes' sight. Adown the valley fires are flickering dun, And groups dance round, that promise lots of fun. See there a knot of girls that smirking, smiling. Would seem to welcome me with looks beguiling. That coyly, now retreating, now advances, And pours upon me showers of merry glances. But softly, softly, on them. Fond of sweets, The traveller must snap up what he meets. N 178 FATJSTUS. Enter LAMias, who seek to attract Mephistopheles. Lami^. Quicker come — quicker come, Faster and faster ; Luring on after us The old witch-master. Now for a little while Loiter and linger ; Lure him with merry smile ; Beckon with finger. Precious the prize to hold : Happy the winners, If we can catch the old Prince of all sinners. O'er the uneven ground. Stumping and stumbling ; O'er the uneven ground, Tripping and tumbling, 'T were pleasant to lead To the path of repentance — Staggering — swaggering — Our new acquaintance. Dragging his game-leg Leave him behind, He with his lame leg — We like the wind. rAusT0s. ] 79 Mephistopheles {hesitating). Deceivers that they are ! Oh, fate accursed ! Every man tricked and tempted like the first ! Yes, all grow older, but none grows more steady. Poor devil! wert thou not fooled enough already? They're good for nothing. We know how the case is, With their tight laces and patched painted faces. Rotten in every limb — peep where you will, Not a sound spot in them — all rotten ripe. We know it, see it, feel it, too — and still What man but dances when the carrions pipe ? Lami^ {stopping). Look sharp — he halts — he hesitates — he lingers. At him, girls, now, or he '11 slip through our fingers. \_Advancing holdly. Mephistopheles. Pluck up your courage ! Why these twitches Of doubt ? Pluck up and join the revel. If in the world there were no witches, The devil a one would be a devil. Laml