Faust [part 1]. Translated Into English in the Original Metres · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FAUST
Though some familiar tone, retrieving My thoughts from torment, led me on, And sweet, clear echoes came, deceiving A faith bequeathed from Childhood’s dawn, Yet now I curse whate’er entices And snares the soul with visions vain; With dazzling cheats and dear devices Confines it in this cave of pain! Cursed be, at once, the high ambition Wherewith the mind itself deludes! Cursed be the glare of apparition That on the finer sense intrudes! Cursed be the lying dream’s impression Of name, and fame, and laurelled brow! Cursed, all that flatters as possession, As wife and child, as knave and plow! Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate! Cursed when, for soft, indulgent leisures, He lays for us the pillows straight! Cursed be the vine’s transcendent nectar,— The highest favor Love lets fall! Cursed, also, Hope!—cursed Faith, the spectre! And cursed be Patience most of all! CHORUS OF SPIRITS (_invisible_) Woe! woe! Thou hast it destroyed, The beautiful world, With powerful fist: In ruin ’tis hurled, By the blow of a demigod shattered! The scattered Fragments into the Void we carry, Deploring The beauty perished beyond restoring. Mightier For the children of men, Brightlier Build it again, In thine own bosom build it anew! Bid the new career Commence, With clearer sense, And the new songs of cheer Be sung thereto!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.