Faust :: :: University of Virginia Library

Auerbach's Wine-Cellar. Leipzig.
A BOUT OF MERRY FELLOWS.
FROSCH.
Will no one sing? none crack a joke?
I'll teach you to make saucy faces!
Like old wet straw to-day you smoke,
While bright as flame your wonted blaze is.

BRANDER.
The blame lies with yourself, for you have given us
To-day no fun nor frolic to enliven us.

FROSCH.
(throwing a glass of wine over his head.)
There hast thou both then!

BRANDER.
Double swine!

FROSCH.
You asked a joke—I gave it you in wine!

SIEBEL.
Out at the door with all who dare to quarrel!
Drink, roar, and sing out from your lungs' good barrel!
Up! hollo! ho!

ALTMAYER.
Woe's me! the devil and all his crew are here!
Some cotton, ho! he makes my ear-drum crack.

SIEBEL.
Roar on! for, when the vault loud echoes back,
The sonorous bass best thunders to the ear.

FROSCH.
Right, right! out with each saucy fellow!
A! tara lara da!

ALTMAYER.
A tara lara da!

FROSCH.

Our throats are now quite mellow.

(Sings.)

The holy Roman empire now,
How does it hold together?

A clumsy song!—deuce take your politics!
You may thank God, each day you ope your eye, sir,
The Roman empire can give you small pain;
For me, I reckon it the greatest gain
That I am neither Chancellor nor Kaiser.
Yet even we must have a head to rule us;
Let's choose a pope in drinking well to school us,
Come, well you know the qualification
That lifts a man to consideration.

FROSCH.
(sings.)
Mount up, lady nightingale,
Greet my love ten thousand times.

SIEBEL.
No, sir, not once,—I'll hear no more of this.

FROSCH.
But you shall hear!—A greeting and a kiss!
(He sings.)

Ope the door in silent night.
Ope and let me in, I pray;
Shut the door, the morn is bright,
Shut it love, I must away!

SIEBEL.
Yes! sing and sing! praise and bepraise her too!
I shall have laughing soon, I warrant you.
The jade has jilted me! thee will she treat no better.
I would some Kobold for his wife might get her,
Upon some lone cross road with her to toy;
Or that some old he-goat, that tramps away
From merry Blocksberg on the first of May,
Might serenade her as he gallops by.
An honest man of genuine flesh and blood
Is for the wench by far too good.
No other greeting will I give her
Than all her window-panes to shiver!

BRANDER.
(striking the table.)
Gentlemen hear! only attend to me,
And you shall see that I know how to live.
If love-sick people here there be,
In compliment to them, I'm bound to give
A song brim-full of the most melting passion.
I'll sing a ditty of the newest fashion!
Attend, and join all merry in the chorus!

[BRANDER]
(He sings.)
In a pantry-hole there liv'd a rat,
On bacon and on butter,

It had a paunch as round and fat
As honest Doctor Luther.
The cook plac'd poison in its way,
It felt as straiten'd all the day,
As if it had love in its body.

CHORUS.
(shouting.)
As if it had love in its body.

BRANDER.
It ran within, it ran without,
And sipp'd in every puddle,
And scratch'd and gnaw'd, but better'd not
The fever of its noddle.
With many a gasp it tossed and toss'd,
Seem'd ready to give up the ghost,
As if it had love in its body.

CHORUS.
As if it had love in its body.

BRANDER.
It left its hole for very pain,
Into the kitchen crawling,
And snorting there with might and main,
Upon the hearth lay sprawling.
The cook she laugh'd when she saw it die,
It squeaks, quoth she, with its latest sigh,
As if it had love in its body.

CHORUS.
As if it had love in its body.

SIEBEL.
How the hard-hearted boys rejoice!
As if it were a trade so choice
To poison the poor rats and mice.

BRANDER.
You seem to eye them with peculiar favour.

ALTMAYER.
The oily paunch! the bald pate, the!—
He is most meek and piteous ever;
In the poor rat at once he knew
His counterfeit—most passing true!