With joy it strains the milky boon;
So you anon will suck nutrition
From Wisdom’s breasts with blest fruition.
Student.
I yearn to do so even now;
But, in the first place, tell me how?
Mephistopheles.
My help is yours, or great or small;
But choose your Faculty, first of all.
Student.
I aim at culture, learning, all
That men call science on the ball
Of earth, or in the starry tent
Of heaven; all Nature high and low,
Broad and deep, I seek to know.
Mephistopheles.
There you are on the proper scent;
Only beware of too much distraction.
Student.
With soul and body I’m girt for action,
And yet I cannot choose but praise
A little freedom and merriment,
On pleasant summer holidays.
Mephistopheles.
Redeem the time, for fast it fleets away,
But order rules the hour it cannot stay.
Therefore ’tis plain that you must pass
First of all through the logic class.
There will your mind be postured rightly,
Laced up in Spanish buskins tightly,
That with caution and care, as wisdom ought,
It may creep along the path of thought,
And not with fitful flickering glow
Will o’ the wisp it to and fro.
There, too, if you hear the gentleman through
The term, to every lecture true,
You’ll learn that a stroke of human thinking,
Which you had practised once as free
And natural as eating and drinking,
Cannot be made without one! two! three!
