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,
They have got up a theatre.
What make you here?
A Servant.
You are just come in time.
’Tis a new piece, the last of all the seven,
For such the number that with us is given.
A dilettante ’twas that wrote the rhyme,
And dilettanti are the actors too.
Excuse me, sirs,—no disrespect to you,
If I seem curt: I am the dilettante
