Oohoo! Shoohoo! what a riot!
Owl and pewit, jay and piet!
Will no bird to-night be quiet?
What is this? red salamanders,
With long legs and swoll’n paunches,
Weaving wreathy fire-meanders
Through the thicket’s bristling branches!
And the trees, their roots outspreading
From the sand and rocky bedding,
Winding, stretching, twisting grimly,
Through the dun air darting dimly
Seek to seize us, seek to grasp us,
And with snaky coils enclasp us!
And the mice in motley muster,
Red and white, and blue and grey,
Thick as bees that hang in cluster,
Crowd along the heathy way.
And the fire-flies shooting lightly
Through the weirdly winding glade,
With bewildering escort, brightly
Lead the streaming cavalcade!
But tell me, in this strange confusion,
What is real, what delusion?
Do we walk with forward faces,
Or stand and halt with baffled paces?
All things seem to change their places,
Rocks and trees to make grimaces,
And the lights in witchy row,
Twinkle more and more they blow!
Mephistopheles.
Hold me tightly by the cue!
From this hillock, we may view,
At leisure, with admiring gaze,
How Mammon in the mount doth blaze!
Faust.
How strangely through the glooming glens
Dim sheen, like morning redness, glimmers!
Ev’n to the darkest, deepest dens
With its long streaky rays it shimmers.
Here mounts the smoke, there rolls the steam,
