Of suns and worlds I’ve nought to say,
I only see how men must fret their lives away.
The little god o’ the world jogs and jogs on, the same
As when from ruddy clay he took his name;
And, sooth to say, remains a riddle, just
As much as when you shaped him from the dust.
Perhaps a little better he had thriven,
Had he not got the show of glimmering light from heaven:
He calls it reason, and it makes him free
To be more brutish than a brute can be;
He is, methinks, with reverence of your grace,
Like one of the long-leggèd race
Of grasshoppers that leap in the air, and spring,
And straightway in the grass the same old song they sing;
’Twere well that from the grass he never rose,
On every stubble he must break his nose!
The Lord.
Hast thou then nothing more to say?
And art thou here again to-day
To vent thy grudge in peevish spite
Against the earth, still finding nothing right?
Mephistopheles.
True, Lord; I find things there no better than before;
I must confess I do deplore
Man’s hopeless case, and scarce have heart myself
To torture the poor miserable elf.
The Lord.
Dost thou know Faust?
Mephistopheles.
The Doctor?
The Lord.
Ay: my servant.
Mephistopheles.
Indeed! and of his master’s will observant,
In fashion quite peculiar to himself;
His food and drink are of no earthly taste,
A restless fever drives him to the waste.
Himself half seems to understand
How his poor wits have run astrand;
From heaven he asks each loveliest star,
Earth’s chiefest joy must jump to his demand,
And all that’s near, and all that’s far,
Soothes not his deep-moved spirit’s war.
The Lord.
Though for a time he blindly grope his way,
Soon will I lead him into open day;
Well knows the gardener, when green shoots appear,
That bloom and fruit await the ripening year.
Mephistopheles.
What wager you? you yet shall lose that soul!
