Who will betray thy name to infamy,
And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss,
First by dishonouring thee, and then by turning
False pleasure to true ignominy.

JUSTINA.

I

Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven
May scatter thy delusions, and the blot
Upon my fame vanish in idle thought,
Even as flame dies in the envious air,

And as the floweret wanes at morning frost,
And thou shouldst never--But, alas! to whom
Do I still speak?-Did not a man but now
Stand here before me?—No, I am alone,
And yet I saw him. Is he gone so quickly?
Or can the heated mind engender shapes
From its own fear? Some terrible and strange
Peril is near.
Lisander! father! lord!
Livia!-

[Exit.

TRANSLATION FROM MOSCHUS.

PAN loved his neighbour Echo-but that child
Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
The bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping.
As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr;

The Satyr, Lyda-and thus love consumed them.— And thus to each-which was a woful matter

To bear what they inflicted, justice doom'd them; For inasmuch as each might hate the lover,

Each loving, so was hated.-Ye that love not Be warn'd-in thought turn this example over, That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.

SCENES

FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE.

PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN.

THE LORD and the Host of Heaven. Enter three Archangels.

RAPHAEL.

THE sun makes music as of old

Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,

On its predestined circle roll'd

With thunder speed: the Angels even Draw strength from gazing on its glance, Though none its meaning fathom may :The world's unwither'd countenance Is bright as at creation's day.

GABRIEL.

And swift and swift, with rapid lightness, The adorned Earth spins silently, Alternating Elysian brightness

With deep and dreadful night; the sea Foams in broad billows from the deep

Up to the rocks, and rocks and occan, Onward, with spheres which never sleep, Are hurried in eternal motion.

MICHAEL.

And tempests in contention roar

From land to sea, from sea to land; And, raging, weave a chain of power, Which girds the earth, as with a band.

A flashing desolation there,

Flames before the thunder's way; But thy servants, Lord! revere

The gentle changes of thy day.

CHORUS OF THE THREE.

The Angels draw strength from thy glance,
Though no one comprehend thee may;-
Thy world's unwither'd countenance
Is bright as on creation's day.'

Enter MEPHISTOPHELES.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

As thou, O Lord! once more art kind enough

To interest thyself in our affairs

And ask, How goes it with you there below?»
And as indulgently at other times

Thou tookedst not my visits in ill part,

Thou seest me here once more among thy household. Though I should scandalize this company,

You will excuse me if I do not talk

In the high style which they think fashionable;
My pathos would certainly make you laugh too,
Had you not long since given over laughing.
Nothing know I to say of suns and worlds;
I observe only how men plague themselves;-
The little god o' the world keeps the same stamp,
As wonderful as on creation's day :-
Alle better would he live, hadst thou
Not given him a glimpse of heaven's light,
Which he calls reason, and employs it only
To live more beastlily than any beast.
With reverence to your Lordship be it spoken,
Ile 's like one of those long-legg'd grasshoppers,
Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever

I RAPHAEL..

The sun sounds, according to ancient custom,
In the song of emulation of his brother-spheres.
And its fore-written circle

Fulfills with a step of thunder.

Its countenance gives the Angels strength,
Though no one can fathom it,

The incredible high works

Are excellent as at the first day.

GABRIEL.

And swift, and inconceivably swift

The adornment of earth winds itself round,

And exchanges Paradise-clearness

With deep dreadful night.

The sea foams in broad waves

From its deep bottom, up to the rocks,

And rocks and sea are torn on together

In the eternal swift course of the spheres.

MICHAEL.

And storms roar in emulation
From sea to land, from land to sea,
And make, reging, a chain
Of deepest operation round about.
There flames a flashing destruction
Before the path of the thunderbolt.
But thy servants, Lord, revere
The gentle alternations of thy day.

CHORUS.

Thy countenance gives the Angels strength,
Though none can comprehend thee:
And all thy lofty works

Are excellent as at the first day.

Such is a literal translation of this astonishing Chorus; it is impossible to represent in another language the melody of the versification; even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas escape in the crucible of translation, and the reader is surprised to find a caput mortuum.-Author's Note.

He serves you in a fashion quite his own;
And the fool's meat and drink are not of earth.
His aspirations bear him on so far
That he is half aware of his own folly,
For he demands from Heaven its fairest star,
And from the earth the highest joy it bears:
Yet all things far, and all things near, are vain
To calm the deep emotions of his breast.
THE LORD.

Though he now serves me in a cloud of error,
I will soon lead him forth to the clear day.
When trees look green, full well the gardener knows
That fruits and blooms will deck the coming year.

And, among all the Spirits who rebell'd,
The knave was ever the least tedious to me.

The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon
He seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I
Have given him the Devil for a companion,
Who may provoke him to some sort of work,
And must create for ever.-But ye, pure
Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty;-
Let that which ever operates and lives
Clasp you within the limits of its love;
And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts
The floating phantoms of its loveliness.

[Heaven closes; the Archangels.exeunt.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

From time to time I visit the old fellow,
And I take care to keep on good terms with him.
Civil enough is this same God Almighty,

To talk so freely with the Devil himself.

MAY-DAY NIGHT.

SCENE-The Hartz Mountain, a desolate Country. FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES.

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 th' 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 favour 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 zig-zag.

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.

MEPHISTOPHELES.

Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain

Chorus.

The limits of the sphere of dream,

The bounds of true and false, are past. 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.

Tu-whoo! tu-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 hill-side,

With strange contortions through the night,

Curls, to seize or to affright;
And, animated, strong, and many,
They dart forth polypus-antennæ,

To blister with their poison spume

The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom
The many-colour'd 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 fire-flies 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 puff'd up and multiplied.

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, lightening 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 colours spreading;
And now bursts forth in fountains from the earth;
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 splendour.

And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground,
Like golden sand scatter'd upon the darkness;
The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains
That hems us in, are kindled.

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 shatter'd ;

The roots creak, and stretch, and groan;
And ruinously overthrown,

The trunks are crush'd and shatter'd

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!