Faust [part 1]. Translated Into English in the Original Metres · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
FOREST AND CAVERN
FAUST (_solus_) Spirit sublime, thou gav’st me, gav’st me all For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire. Thou gav’st me Nature as a kingdom grand, With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield’st, But grantest, that in her profoundest breast I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend. The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead Before me, teaching me to know my brothers In air and water and the silent wood. And when the storm in forests roars and grinds, The giant firs, in falling, neighbor boughs And neighbor trunks with crushing weight bear down, And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders,— Then to the cave secure thou leadest me, Then show’st me mine own self, and in my breast The deep, mysterious miracles unfold. And when the perfect moon before my gaze Comes up with soothing light, around me float From every precipice and thicket damp The silvery phantoms of the ages past, And temper the austere delight of thought. That nothing can be perfect unto Man I now am conscious. With this ecstasy, Which brings me near and nearer to the Gods, Thou gav’st the comrade, whom I now no more Can do without, though, cold and scornful, he Demeans me to myself, and with a breath, A word, transforms thy gifts to nothingness. Within my breast he fans a lawless fire, Unwearied, for that fair and lovely form: Thus in desire I hasten to enjoyment, And in enjoyment pine to feel desire.
(MEPHISTOPHELES _enters_.) Have you not led this life quite long enough? How can a further test delight you? ’Tis very well, that once one tries the stuff, But something new must then requite you. Would there were other work for thee! To plague my day auspicious thou returnest. Well! I’ll engage to let thee be: Thou darest not tell me so in earnest. The loss of thee were truly very slight,— comrade crazy, rude, repelling: One has one’s hands full all the day and night; If what one does, or leaves undone, is right, From such a face as thine there is no telling. There is, again, thy proper tone!— That thou hast bored me, I must thankful be! Poor Son of Earth, how couldst thou thus alone Have led thy life, bereft of me? I, for a time, at least, have worked thy cure; Thy fancy’s rickets plague thee not at all: Had I not been, so hadst thou, sure, Walked thyself off this earthly ball Why here to caverns, rocky hollows slinking, Sit’st thou, as ’twere an owl a-blinking? Why suck’st, from sodden moss and dripping stone, Toad-like, thy nourishment alone? A fine way, this, thy time to fill! The Doctor’s in thy body still. What fresh and vital forces, canst thou guess, Spring from my commerce with the wilderness? But, if thou hadst the power of guessing, Thou wouldst be devil enough to grudge my soul the blessing.
A blessing drawn from supernatural fountains! In night and dew to lie upon the mountains; All Heaven and Earth in rapture penetrating; Thyself to Godhood haughtily inflating; To grub with yearning force through Earth’s dark marrow, Compress the six days’ work within thy bosom narrow,— To taste, I know not what, in haughty power, Thine own ecstatic life on all things shower, Thine earthly self behind thee cast, And then the lofty instinct, thus— (_With a gesture_:) at last,— daren’t say how—to pluck the final flower! Shame on thee!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.