Mephistopheles.
Yes! that’s not quite to your mind.
You have a privilege to cry out shame,
When things are mentioned by their proper name.
Before chaste ears one may not dare to spout
What chastest hearts yet cannot do without.
I do not envy you the pleasure
Of palming lies upon yourself at leisure;
But long it cannot last, I warrant thee.
You are returned to your old whims, I see,
And, at this rate, you soon will wear
Your strength away, in madness and despair.
Of this enough! thy love sits waiting thee,
In doubt and darkness, cabined and confined.
By day, by night, she has thee in her mind;
I trow she loves thee in no common kind.
Thy raging passion ’gan to flow,
Like a torrent in spring from melted snow;
Into her heart thy tide gushed high,
Now is thy shallow streamlet dry.
Instead of standing here to overbrim
With fine ecstatic rapture to the trees,
Methinks the mighty gentleman might please
To drop some words of fond regard, to ease
The sweet young chick who droops and pines for him.
Poor thing, she is half dead of ennui,
And at the window stands whole hours, to see
The clouds pass by the old town-wall along.
Were I a little bird! so goes her song
The live-long day, and half the night to boot.
Sometimes she will be merry, mostly sad,
Now, like a child, weeping her sorrows out,
Now calm again to look at, never glad;
Always in love.
Faust.
Thou snake! thou snake!
Mephistopheles. [to himself]
So be it! that my guile thy stubborn will may break!
Faust.
Hence and begone, thou son of filth and fire!
Name not the lovely maid again!
Bring not that overmastering desire
Once more to tempt my poor bewildered brain!
Mephistopheles.
What then? she deems that you are gone forever;
And half and half methinks you are.
Faust.
No! I am nigh, and were I ne’er so far,
I could forget her, I could lose her never;
I envy ev’n the body of the Lord,
