Breaks in a minute,
Has nothing within it;
Here it sparkles,
There it darkles,
I am alive!
My dear son, I say,
Keep out of the way!
If you don’t strive,
You will die, you will die!
It is but of clay,
And in pieces will fly!
Mephistopheles.
What make you with the sieve?
The Father Cat-Ape. [bringing down the sieve]
When comes a thief,
On the instant we know him.
[He runs off to the Mother Cat-Ape, and lets her look through the sieve.]
Look through the sieve!
See’st thou the thief,
And fearest to show him?
Mephistopheles. [coming near the fire]
And this pot?
Father Cat-Ape and his Wife.
The silly sot!
He knows not the pot!
And he knows not
The kettle, the sot!
Mephistopheles.
You ill-bred urchin, you!
The Father Cat-Ape.
Come, sit thee down,
We’ll give thee a crown,
And a sceptre too!
[He obliges Mephistopheles to sit down, and gives him a long brush for a sceptre.
Faust. [Who, while Mephistopheles was engaged with the animals, Faust had been standing before a mirror, alternately approaching it and retiring from it.]
What see I here? what heavenly image bright,
Within this magic mirror, chains my sight?
O Love, the swiftest of thy pinions lend me,
That where she is in rapture I may bend me!
Alas! when I would move one step more near,
To breathe her balmy atmosphere,
She seems to melt and disappear,
And cheats my longing eye.
Oh she is fair beyond all type of human!
Is’t possible; can this be simple woman?
There lies she, on that downy couch reposing,
Within herself the heaven of heavens enclosing!
Can it then be that earth a thing so fair contains?
Mephistopheles.
Of course: for when a god has vexed his brains
