Both male and female, if the book don’t lie,
Himself the noblest trade knew well enough,
How to carve out an opportunity.
But come, why peak and pine you here?
I lead you to the chamber of your dear,
Not to the gallows.
Faust.
Ah! what were Heaven’s supremest blessedness
Within her arms, upon her breast, to me!
Must I not still be wrung with agony,
That I should plunge her into such distress?
I, the poor fugitive! outlaw from my kind,
Without a friend, without a home,
With restless heart, and aimless mind,
Unblest, unblessing, ever doomed to roam;
Who, like a waterfall, from rock to rock came roaring,
With greedy rage into the caldron pouring;
While she, a heedless infant, rears
Sidewards her hut upon the Alpine field,
With all her hopes, and all her fears,
Within this little world concealed.
And I—the God-detested—not content
To seize the rocks, and in my headlong bent
To shatter them to dust, with ruthless tide
Her little shielding on the mountain side
Bore down, and wrecked her life’s sweet peace with mine.
And such an offering, Hell, must it be thine?
Help, Devil, to cut short the hour of ill!
What happen must, may happen when it will!
May her sad fate my crashing fall attend,
And she with me be ruined in the end!
Mephistopheles.
Lo! how it boils again and blows
Like furnace, wherefore no man knows.
Go in, thou fool, and let her borrow
From thee, sweet solace to her sorrow!
When such a brainsick dreamer sees
No road, where he to walk may please,
He stands and stares like Balaam’s ass,
As if a god did block the pass.
