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(From Faust) Translated by P. B. Shelley F AUST and M EPHISTOPHELES, in alternate Chorus. | |
| The bounds of true and false, are past. | |
| Lead us on, thou wandering gleam, | |
| Lead us onward, far and fast, | |
| To the wide, the desert waste. | 5 |
| But see, how swift advance and shift | |
| Trees behind trees, row by row,— | |
| How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift | |
| Their frowning foreheads as we go. | |
| The giant-snouted crags, ho, ho! | 10 |
| How they snort, and how they blow! | |
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| Through the mossy sods and stones | |
| Stream and streamlet hurry down, | |
| A rushing throng! A sound of song | |
| Beneath the vault of heaven is blown! | 15 |
| Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones | |
| Of this bright day, sent down to say | |
| That paradise on earth is known, | |
| Resound around, beneath, above; | |
| All we hope and all we love | 20 |
| Finds a voice in this blithe strain, | |
| Which wakens hill and wood and rill, | |
| And vibrates far o’er field and vale, | |
| And which echo, like the tale | |
| Of old times, repeats again. | 25 |
| To-whoo! to-whoo! near, nearer now | |
| The sound of song, the rushing throng! | |
| Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay, | |
| All awake as if ’t were day? | |
| See, with long legs and belly wide, | 30 |
| A salamander in the brake! | |
| Every root is like a snake, | |
| And along the loose hillside, | |
| With strange contortions through the night, | |
| Curls, to seize or to affright; | 35 |
| And animated, strong, and many, | |
| They dart forth polypus-antennæ, | |
| To blister with their poison spume | |
| The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom | |
| The many-colored mice that thread | 40 |
| The dewy turf beneath our tread, | |
| In troops each other’s motions cross, | |
| Through the heath and through the moss; | |
| And in legions intertangled, | |
| The fireflies flit, and swarm, and throng, | 45 |
| Till all the mountain-depths are spangled. | |
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| Tell me, shall we go or stay? | |
| Shall we onward? Come along! | |
| Everything around is swept | |
| Forward, onward, far away! | 50 |
| Trees and masses intercept | |
| The sight, and wisps on every side | |
| Are puffed up and multiplied. | |
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MEPHISTOPHELES Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain | |
| This pinnacle of isolated crag. | 55 |
| One may observe with wonder from this point | |
| How Mammon glows among the mountains. | |
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FAUST Ay— | |
| And strangely through the solid depth below | |
| A melancholy light, like the red dawn, | 60 |
| Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss | |
| Of mountains, lighting hitherward; there rise | |
| Pillars of smoke; here clouds float gently by; | |
| Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air, | |
| Or the illumined dust of golden flowers; | 65 |
| And now it glides like tender colors spreading, | |
| And now bursts forth in fountains from the earth, | |
| And now it winds one torrent of broad light | |
| Through the far valley with a hundred veins; | |
| And now once more within that narrow corner | 70 |
| Masses itself into intensest splendor. | |
| And near us see sparks spring out of the ground, | |
| Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness; | |
| The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains | |
| That hems us in are kindled. | 75 |
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MEPHISTOPHELES Rare, in faith! | |
| Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate | |
| His palace for this festival,—it is | |
| A pleasure which you had not known before. | |
| I spy the boisterous guests already. | 80 |
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FAUST How | |
| The children of the wind rage in the air! | |
| With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck! | |
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MEPHISTOPHELES Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag. | |
| Beware! for if with them thou warrest | 85 |
| In their fierce flight towards the wilderness, | |
| Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag | |
| Thy body to a grave in the abyss. | |
| A cloud thickens the night. | |
| Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest! | 90 |
| The owls fly out in strange affright: | |
| The columns of the evergreen palaces | |
| Are split and shattered; | |
| The roots creak, and stretch, and groan; | |
| And, ruinously overthrown, | 95 |
| The trunks are crushed and shattered | |
| By the fierce blast’s unconquerable stress. | |
| Over each other crack and crash they all | |
| In terrible and intertangled fall; | |
| And through the ruins of the shaken mountain | 100 |
| The airs hiss and howl,— | |
| It is not the voice of the fountain, | |
| Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl. | |
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| Dost thou not hear? | |
| Strange accents are ringing | 105 |
| Aloft, afar, anear; | |
| The witches are singing! | |
| The torrent of a raging wizard’s-song | |
| Streams the whole mountain along. | |
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