Chorus of Spirits. [invisible]
Woe! woe!
Thou hast destroyed it!
The beautiful world,
With mightiest hand,
A demigod
In ruin has hurled!
We weep,
And bear its wrecked beauty away,
Whence it may never
Return to the day.
Mightiest one
Of the sons of earth,
Brightest one,
Build it again!
Proudly resurgent with lovelier birth
In thine own bosom build it again!
Life’s glad career
Anew commence
With insight clear,
And purgèd sense,
The while new songs around thee play,
To launch thee on more hopeful way!
Mephistopheles.
These are the tiny
Spirits that wait on me;
Hark how to pleasure
And action they counsel thee!
Into the world wide
Would they allure thee,
In solitude dull
No more to immure thee,
No more to sit moping
In mouldy mood,
With a film on thy sense,
And a frost in thy blood!
Cease then with thine own peevish whim to play,
That like a vulture makes thy life its prey.
Society, however low,
Still gives thee cause to feel and know
