With a gay cock’s feather on it,
And at my side a long sharp sword.
Now listen to a well-meant word;
Do thou the like, and follow me,
All unembarrassed thus and free,
To mingle in the busy scenes
Of life, and know what living means.
Faust.
Still must I suffer, clothe me as you may,
This narrow earthly life’s incumbrancy;
Too old I am to be content with play,
Too young from every longing to be free.
What can the world hold forth for me to gain?
Abstain, it saith, and still it saith, Abstain!
This is the burden of the song
That in our ears eternal rings,
Life’s dreary litany lean and long,
That each dull moment hoarsely sings.
With terror wake I in the morn from sleep,
And bitter tears might often weep,
To see the day, when its dull course is run,
That brings to fruit not one small wish,—not one!
That, with capricious criticising,
Each taste of joy within my bosom rising,
Ere it be born, destroys, and in my breast
Chokes every thought that gives existence zest,
With thousand soulless trifles of an hour.
And when the dark night-shadows lower,
I seek to ease my aching brain
Upon a weary couch in vain.
With throngs of feverish dreams possessed,
Even in the home of sleep I find no rest;
The god, that in my bosom dwells,
Can stir my being’s inmost wells;
But he who sways supreme our finer stuff,
Moves not the outward world, hard, obdurate, and tough.
Thus my existence is a load of woes,
Death my best friend, and life my worst of foes.
Mephistopheles.
And yet methinks this friend you call your best,
Is seldom, when he comes, a welcome guest.
Faust.
Oh! happy he to whom, in victory’s glance,
Death round his brow the bloody laurel winds!
Whom, ’mid the circling hurry of the dance,
Locked in a maiden’s close embrace he finds;
O! would to God that I had sunk that night
In tranceful death before the Spirit’s might!
Mephistopheles.
Yet, on a certain night, a certain man was slow
