 | Faustus, A Dramatic Mystery ; The Bride of Corinth ; The First Walpurgis Night |  |
17
DER HERR, THE HEAVENLY HOSTS, afterwards MEPHISTOPHELES.
The three Archangels come forward.
Raphael.
The sun, as in the ancient days,
'Mong sister stars in rival song,
His destined path observes, obeys,
And still in thunder rolls along:
New strength and full beatitude
The angels gather from his sight,
Mysterious all—yet all is good,
All fair as at the birth of light!
Gabriel.
Swift, unimaginably swift,
Soft spins the earth, and glories bright
Of mid-day Eden change and shift
To shades of deep and spectral night.
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And chide the rocks with insult hoarse,
And wave and rock are hurried on,
And suns and stars in endless course.
Michael.
And winds with winds mad war maintain,
From sea to land, from land to sea;
And heave round earth, a living chain
Of interwoven agency.
Guides of the bursting thunder-peal,
Fast lightnings flash with deadly ray,
While, Lord, with Thee thy servants feel
Calm effluence of abiding day.
All.
New strength and full beatitude
The angels gather from thy sight;
Mysterious all, yet all is good,
All fair as at the birth of light.
Mephistopheles.
Since Thou, O Lord, dost visit us once more,
To ask how things are going on, and since
You have received me kindly heretofore,
I venture to the levee of my prince.
Pardon me, if I fail, after the sort
Of bending courtiers here, to pay my court;
19
They smile with scorn such folk in heaven to see.
High hymns and solemn words are not my forte.
Pathos from me would look too like a joke;
Words, that from others had set angels weeping,
To laughter would your very self provoke,
If laughter were not wholly out of keeping.
Nothing of suns or worlds have I to say,
I only see how men fret on their day;
The little god of earth is still the same
Strange thing he was, when first to life he came;
That life were somewhat better, if the light
Of Heaven had not been given to spoil him quite.
Reason he calls it—see its blessed fruit,
Than the brute beast man is a beastlier brute;
He seems to me, if I may venture on
Such a comparison, to be like one
Of those long lank-legged grashoppers, whose song
The self-same creak, chirps, as they bound along,
Monotonous and restless in the grass,
'Twere well 'twas in grass always; but, alas,
They thrust their snouts in every filth they pass.
Der Herr.
Hast thou no more than this to say,
Thou, who complainest every day?
Are all things evil in thy sight?
Does nothing on the earth move right?
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Not any thing, my lord—poor men so fervent
And foolish are—I almost feel compassion.
Der Herr.
Dost thou know Faust?
Mephistopheles.
The doctor?
Der Herr.
Yes: my servant.
Mephistopheles.
Truly, he serves in a peculiar fashion;
Child though he be of human birth,
His food and drink are not of earth.
Foolish—even he at times will feel
The folly in such hopes to deal:—
His fancies hurry him afar;
Of heaven he asks its highest star;
Self-willed and spoiled, in mad pursuit,
Of earth demands its fairest fruit;
And all that both can give supplied,
Behold him still unsatisfied!
Der Herr.
Yes: for he serves in a perplexing scene,
That oft misleads him. Still his WILL is right;
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Now is the first prophetic green,
The hopes and promises of spring,
The unformed bud and blossoming;
And he who reared the tree and knows the clime
Will seek and find fair fruit in fitting time.
Mephistopheles.
What will you wager you don't lose him yet,
With all his promise? Had I only freedom
On my own path with easy lure to lead him,
I've not a doubt of it I win the bet.
Der Herr.
As long as on the earth endures his life
To deal with him have full and free permission;
Man's hour on earth is weakness, error, strife.
Mephistopheles.
Cheerfully I agree to the condition;
I have no fancy for the dead: your youth,
With full fresh cheeks, tastes daintier to my tooth.
Should a corpse call, the answer at my house
Is, “Not at home.” Cats like a tender mouse.
Der Herr.
Be it permitted: from his source divert
And draw this Spirit captive down with thee;
Till baffled and in shame thou dost admit,
“A good man, clouded though his senses be
By error, is no willing slave to it.”
His consciousness of good will it desert
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Still doth he war with Darkness and the Powers
Of Darkness;—for the light he cannot see
Still round him feels;—and, if he be not free,
Struggles against this strange captivity.
Mephistopheles.
Well, this can neither make me fear nor fret;
I cannot have a doubt about the bet.
Oh! in what triumph shall I crow at winning!
Dust he shall eat, and eat with pleasure yet,
Like that first SNAKE in my poor heraldry,
Who has been eating it from the beginning.
Der Herr.
Still visit here. With any thing but loathing
I look on folk like you. My work demands
Such servants. Of the Spirits of Denial
The pleasantest, that figures in Man's Trial,
Is old Iniquity in his Fool's clothing;
The Vice is never heavy upon hands:
Without the Knave the Mystery were nothing.
For Man's activity soon tires,
(A lazy being at the best)
And sting and spur requires.
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And this companion, whom I therefore give,
Goads, urges, drives—is devil, and cannot rest.
But ye, true sons of God, be yours the sight
Of living Beauty and Eternal Light!
The Universal Soul, in which all move,
And live, and are, encompass you in love;
And all that flows unfixed and undefined
In glimmering phantasy before the mind,
Bid Thought's enduring chain for ever bind!
[Heaven closes.
Mephistopheles
(alone).
I'm very glad to have it in my power
To see him now and then; he is so civil:
I rather like our good old governor—
Think only of his speaking to the devil!
In the original “Der Schalk” the droll of the old mysteries and moralities. “The formal Vice Iniquity.”—Richard the Third. “—the old Vice, Who, with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries ah! ha! to the Devil.”—Twelfth Night. The characters of the Devil and the Vice which were originally distinct became in the progress of the dramatic art soon blended into one. “The province of making the spectators merry descended from the Devil in the mystery to the Vice or Iniquity of the Morality, who originally personified some bad quality incident to human nature, as Pride, Lust, &c.”—Strutt. “Some traces of this antiquated exhibition are still retained in the rustic puppet-plays, in which I have seen the Devil very lustily belaboured by Punch, whom I hold to be the legitimate successor of the old Vice.”—Johnson. The best account I know of the word “Der Schalk” is in Koller's Faust Papers.
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