Faust.
Alas! while she so passing sweet was singing,
I saw a red mouse from her mouth outspringing.
Mephistopheles.
Pooh! on the Brocken that’s a thing of course;
Let not such trifles mar your sweet discourse.
Go, join the crew, and dance away;
Enough, the red mouse was not gray.
Faust.
Then saw I—
Mephistopheles.
What?
Faust.
Mephisto, see’st thou there
A pale yet lovely girl, in lonely distance fare?
From place to place she moveth slow;
With shackled feet she seems to go;
I must confess, she has a cast
Of Margaret, when I saw her last.
Mephistopheles.
Let that alone! it brings thee certain harm;
It is bewitched, a bloodless, breathless form,
For men to look upon it is not good.
Its fixèd gaze hath power to freeze the blood,
And petrify thee stark and stiff.
Of course I need not ask you if
You’ve heard of the Medusa’s head.
Faust.
In truth I see the eyes of one that’s dead,
On which no closing hand of love was laid.
That is my Margaret’s kindly breast,
That the sweet body I caressed.
Mephistopheles.
There lies the witchcraft o’t, thou fool!
A phantom takes thy wit to school:
She is the love of every lover’s brain.
Faust.
What ecstasy! and yet what pain!
I cannot leave it for my life.
How strangely this most lovely neck
A single streak of red doth deck,
No broader than the back o’ a knife!
Mephistopheles.
Quite right! I see it, just as well as you.
Sometimes her head beneath her elbow too
She wears; for Perseus cut it off, you know.
What! will you still a-dreaming go?
Come, let us mount the hillock—there
We shall have noble sport, believe me;
For, unless mine eyes deceive me,
