Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FAUST: SCENE 2. MAY DAY NIGHT, by JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FAUST: SCENE 2. MAY DAY NIGHT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Would you not like a broomstick? As for me
Last Line: I am a dilettante curtain-lifter.
Subject(s): Faust


The Hartz Mountain, a desolate country

Mephistopheles
Would you not like a broomstick? As for me
I wish I had a good stout ram to ride;
For we are still far from the appointed place.

Faust
This knotted staff is help enough for me
Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good
Is there in making short a pleasant way?
To creep along the labyrinths of the vales
And climb those rocks where ever-babbling springs
Precipitate themselves in waterfalls
Is the true sport that seasons such a path.
Already spring kindles the birchen spray,
And the hoar pines already feel her breath.
Shall she not work also within our limbs?

Mephistopheles
Nothing of such an influence do I feel.
My body is all wintry, and I wish
The flowers upon our path were frost and snow.
But see how melancholy rises now,
Dimly uplifting her belated beam,
The blank unwelcome round of the red moon,
And gives so bad a light that every step
One stumbles 'gainst some crag. With your permission
I'll call an Ignis-fatuus to our aid.
I see one yonder burning jollily.
Halloo, my friend! may I request that you
Would favor us with your bright company?
Why should you blaze away there to no purpose?
Pray be so good as light us up this way

Ignis-Fatuus
With reverence be it spoken, I will try
To overcome the lightness of my nature;
Our course, you know, is generally zigzag.

Mephistopheles
Ha, ha! your worship thinks you have to deal
With men. Go straight on, in the Devil's name,
Or I shall puff your flickering life out.

Ignis-Fatuus
Well,
I see you are the master of the house;
I will accommodate myself to you.
Only consider that tonight this mountain
Is all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern
Shows you his way, though you should miss your own,
You ought not to be too exact with him.

Faust, Mephistopheles, Ignis-Fatuus
in alternate chorus

The limits of the sphere of dream,
The bounds of true and false, are passed.
Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,
Lead us onward, far and fast
To the wide, the desert waste.

But see, how swift advance and shift
Trees behind trees, row by row;
How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift
Their frowning foreheads as we go.
The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort, and how they blow!

Through the mossy sods and stones,
Stream and streamlet hurry down --
A rushing throng! A sound of song
Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown!
Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones
Of this bright day, sent down to say
That Paradise on Earth is known,
Resound around, beneath, above.
All we hope and all we love
Finds a voice in this blithe strain
Which wakens hill and wood and rill,
And vibrates far o'er field and vale,
And which Echo, like the tale
Of old times, repeats again.

To-whoo! to-whoo! near, nearer now
The sound of song, the rushing throng!
Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay,
All awake as if 't were day?
See, with long legs and belly wide
A salamander in the brake!
Every root is like a snake,
And along the loose hillside,
With strange contortions through the night,
Curls, to seize or to affright;
And, animated, strong, and many,
They dart forth polypus-antennae,
To blister with their poison spume
The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom
The many-colored mice, that thread
The dewy turf beneath our tread,
In troops each other's motions cross
Through the heath and through the moss;
And, in legions intertangled,
The fireflies flit, and swarm, and throng,
Till all the mountain depths are spangled.

Tell me, shall we go or stay?
Shall we onward? Come along!
Everything around is swept
Forward, onward, far away?
Trees and masses intercept
The sight, and wisps on every side
Are puffed up and multiplied.

Mephistopheles
Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain
This pinnacle of isolated crag.
One may observe with wonder from this point
How Mammon glows among the mountains.

Faust
Ay --
And strangely through the solid depth below
A melancholy light, like the red dawn,
Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss
Of mountains, lightning hitherward; there rise
Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by;
Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air,
Or the illumined dust of golden flowers;
And now it glides like tender colors spreading;
And now it winds, one torrent of broad light
Through the far valley, with a hundred veins;
And now once more within that narrow corner
Masses itself into intensest splendor.
And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground
Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness;
The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains
That hems us in are kindled.

Mephistopheles
Rare, in faith!
Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate
His palace for this festival -- it is
A pleasure which you had not known before.
I spy the boisterous guests already.

Faust
How
The children of the wind rage in the air!
With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck!

Mephistopheles
Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.
Beware! for it with them thou warrest
In their fierce flight towards the wilderness,
Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag
Thy body to a grave in the abyss.
A cloud thickens the night.
Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest!
The owls fly out in strange affright;
The columns of the evergreen palaces
Are split and shattered;
The roots creak, and stretch, and groan;
And ruinously overthrown,
The trunks are crushed and shattered
By the fierce blast's unconquerable stress.
Over each other crack and crash they all
In terrible and intertangled fall;
And through the ruins of the shaken mountain
The airs hiss and howl.
It is not the voice of the fountain,
Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl.
Dost thou not hear?
Strange accents are ringing
Aloft, afar, anear;
The witches are singing!
The torrent of a raging wizard song
Streams the whole mountain along.

Chorus of Witches
The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,
Now to the Brocken the witches go;
The mighty multitude here may be seen
Gathering, wizard and witch, below.
Sir Urian is sitting aloft in the air;
Hey over stock! and hey over stone!
'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done?
Tell it who dare! tell it who dare!

A Voice
Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine,
Old Baubo rideth alone.

Chorus
Honor her, to whom honor is due,
Old mother Baubo, honor to you!
An able sow, with old Baubo upon her,
Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honor!
The legion of witches is coming behind
Darkening the night, and outspeeding the wind --

A Voice
Which way comest thou!

A Voice
Over Ilsenstein;
The owl was awake in the white moonshine;
I saw her at rest in her downy nest,
And she stared at me with her broad, bright eyne.

Voices
And you may now as well take your course on to Hell,
Since you ride by so fast on the headlong blast.

A Voice
She dropped poison upon me as I passed.
Here are the wounds --

Chorus of Witches
Come away! come along!
The way is wide, the way is long,
But what is that for a Bedlam throng?
Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom.
The child in the cradle lies strangled at home,
And the mother is clapping her hands. --

Semichorus 1. of Wizards
We glide in
Like snails when the women are all away;
And from a house once given over to sin
Woman has a thousand steps to stray.

Semichorus 2.
A thousand steps must a woman take,
Where a man but a single spring will make.

Voices Above
Come with us, come with us, from Felsensee.

Voices Below
With what joy would we fly through the upper sky!
We are washed, we are 'nointed, stark naked are we;
But our toil and our pain are forever in vain.

Both Choruses
The wind is still, the stars are fled,
The melancholy moon is dead;
The magic notes, like spark on spark,
Drizzle, whistling through the dark.
Come away!

Voices Below
Stay, oh, stay!

Voices Above
Out of the crannies of the rocks,
Who calls?

Voices Below
Oh, let me join your flocks!
I three hundred years have striven
To catch your skirt and mount to Heaven --
And still in vain. Oh, might I be
With company akin to me!

Both Choruses
Some on a ram and some on a prong
On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along;
Forlorn is the wight who can rise not tonight.

A Half-Witch Below
I have been tripping this many an hour:
Are the others already so far before?
No quiet at home, and no peace abroad!
And less methinks is found by the road.

Chorus of Witches
Come onward, away! aroint thee, aroint!
A witch to be strong must anoint -- anoint --
Then every trough will be boat enough;
With a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky, --
Who flies not tonight, when means he to fly?

Both Choruses
We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the ground;
Witch-legions thicken around and around;
Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over.
(They descend)

Mephistopheles
What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling;
What whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling;
What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning
As Heaven and Earth were overturning.
There is a true witch element about us;
Take hold on me, or we shall be divided: --
Where are you?

Faust (from a distance)
Here!

Mephistopheles
What!
I must exert my authority in the house.
Place for young Voland! pray make way, good people.
Take hold on me, Doctor, and with one step
Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd.
They are too mad for people of my sort.
Just there shines a peculiar kind of light;
Something attracts me in those bushes. Come
This way; we shall slip down there in a minute.

Faust
Spirit of Contradiction! Well, lead on --
'T were a wise feat indeed to wander out
Into the Brocken upon May day night,
And then to isolate one's self in scorn,
Disgusted with the humors of the time.

Mephistopheles
See yonder, round a many-colored flame
A merry club is huddled altogether:
Even with such little people as sit there
One would not be alone.

Faust
Would that I were
Up yonder in the glow and whirling smoke
Where the blind million rush impetuously
To meet the evil ones; there might I solve
Many a riddle that torments me!

Mephistopheles
Yet
Many a riddle there is tied anew
Inextricably. Let the great world rage!
We will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings.
'T is an old custom. Men have ever built
Their own small world in the great world of all.
I see young witches naked there, and old ones
Wisely attired with greater decency.
Be guided now by me, and you shall buy
A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble.
I hear them tune their instruments -- one must
Get used to this damned scraping. Come, I'll lead you
Among them; and what there you do and see
As a fresh compact 'twixt us two shall be.
How say you now? this space is wide enough --
Look forth, you cannot see the end of it --
An hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they
Who throng around them seem innumerable:
Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love,
And cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend,
What is there better in the world than this?

Faust
In introducing us, do you assume
The character of wizard or of devil?

Mephistopheles
In truth, I generally go about
In strict incognito; and yet one likes
To wear one's orders upon gala days.
I have no ribbon at my knee; but here
At home, the cloven foot is honorable.
See you that snail there? -- she comes creeping up,
And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something.
I could not, if I would, mask myself here.
Come now, we'll go about from fire to fire:
I'll be the pimp, and you shall be the lover.

(To some old women who are sitting
round a heap of glimmering coals)

Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here?
You ought to be with the young rioters
Right in the thickest of the revelry --
But every one is best content at home.

General
Who dare confide in right or a just claim?
So much as I had done for them! and now --
With women and the people 't is the same,
Youth will stand foremost ever, -- age may go
To the dark grave unhonored.

Minister
Nowadays
People assert their rights; they go too far;
But as for me, the good old times I praise;
Then we were all in all, 't was something worth
One's while to be in place and wear a star;
That was indeed the golden age on earth.

Parvenu
We too are active, and we did and do
What we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now
Will seize, whilst all things are whirled round
and round,
A spoke of Fortune's wheel, and keep our ground.

Author
Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense
And ponderous volume? 't is impertinence
To write what none will read, therefore will I,
To please the young and thoughtless people, try.

Mephistopheles
(who at once appears to have grown very old)

I find the people ripe for the last day,
Since I last came up to the wizard mountain;
And as my little cask runs turbid now,
So is the world drained to the dregs.

Pedlar-Witch
Look here,
Gentlemen, do not hurry on so fast
And lose the chance of a good pennyworth.
I have a pack full of the choicest wares
Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle
Is nothing like what may be found on earth;
Nothing that in a moment will make rich
Men and the world with fine malicious mischief.
There is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowl
From which consuming poison may be drained
By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel,
The price of an abandoned maiden's shame;
No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose,
Or stabs the wearer's enemy in the back;
No --

Mephistopheles
Gossip, you now little of these times.
What has been, has been; what is done, is past.
They shape themselves into the innovations
They breed, and innovation drags us with it.
The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us:
You think to impel, and are yourself impelled.

Faust
Who is that yonder?

Mephistopheles
Mark her well. It is Lilith.

Faust
Who?

Mephistopheles
Lilith, the first wife of Adam.
Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
All women in the magic of her locks;
And when she winds them round a young man's neck,
She will not ever set him free again.

Faust
There sit a girl and an old woman -- they
Seem to be tired with pleasure and with play.

Mephistopheles
There is no rest tonight for any one:
When one dance ends another is begun;
Come, let us to it. We shall have rare fun.

(Faust dances and sings with a girl;
Mephistopheles with an old woman)

Faust
I had once a lovely dream
In which I saw an apple tree,
Where two fair apples with their gleam
To climb and taste attracted me.

The Girl
She with apples you desired
From Paradise came long ago;
With joy I feel that, if required,
Such still within my garden grow.

Procto-Phantasmist
What is this cursed multitude about?
Have we not long since proved to demonstration
That ghosts move not on ordinary feet?
But these are dancing just like men and women.

The Girl

Faust
Oh! he
Is far above us all in his conceit:
Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment;
And any step which in our dance we tread,
If it be left out of his reckoning,
Is not to be considered as a step.
There are few things that scandalize him not:
And when you whirl round in the circle now,
As he went round the wheel in his old mill,
He says that you go wrong in all respects,
Especially if you congratulate him
Upon the strength of the resemblance.

Procto-Phantasmist
Fly!
Vanish! Unheard of Impudence! What, still there!
In this enlightened age, too, since you have been
Proved not to exist! -- But this infernal brood
Will hear no reason and endure no rule.
Are we so wise, and is the pond still haunted?
How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish
Of superstition, and the world will not
Come clean with all my pains! -- it is a case
Unheard of!

The Girl
Then leave of teasing us so.

Procto-Phantasmist
I tell you, spirits, to your faces now,
That I should not regret this despotism
Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not.
Tonight I shall make poor work of it,
Yet I will take a round with you, and hope
Before my last step in the living dance
To beat the poet and the devil together.

Mephistopheles
At last he will sit down in some foul puddle;
That in his way of solacing himself;
Until some leech, diverted with his gravity
Cures him of spirits and the spirit together.

(To Faust who has seceded from the dance)

Why do you let that fair girl pass from you
Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?

Faust
A red mouse in the middle of her singing
Sprung from her mouth.

Mephistopheles
Be it enough that the mouse was not gray.
Do not disturb your hour of happiness
With close consideration of such trifles.

Faust
Then saw I --

Mephistopheles
What?

Faust
Seest thou not a pale,
Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away?
She drags herself now forward with slow steps,
And seems as if she moved with shackled feet.
I cannot overcome the thought that she
Is like poor Margaret.

Mephistopheles
Let it be -- pass on --
No good can come of it -- it is not well
To meet it -- it is an enchanted phantom,
A lifeless idol; with its numbing look,
It freezes up the blood of man; and they
Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone
Like those who saw Medusa.

Faust
Oh, too true!
Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse
Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!
That is the breast which Margaret yielded to me --
Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!

Mephistopheles
It is all magic, poor deluded fool!
She looks to every one like his first love.

Faust
Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn
My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.
How strangely does a single blood-red line,
Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife
Adorn her lovely neck!

Mephistopheles
Ay, she can carry
Her head under her arm upon occasion;
Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures
End in delusion. -- Gain this rising ground.
It is as airy here as in a...
And if I am not mightily deceived,
I see a theatre. -- What may this mean?

Attendant
Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for 't is
The custom now to represent that number.
T is written by a Dilettante, and
The actors who perform are Dilettanti;
Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.
I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.






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