Page:Kickerbocker Feb 1833 vol 1 no 2.djvu/14
al, and the energies of the mind are scattered. De profundis clamavi, I have cried out of its depths, with a voice of warning, a cry from its loud and hollow gulphs to those that shall come after: but they would not believe the warning, though one came to deliver it from the dead. To them the vortex is attractive, but not to Faust; he has been engaged in high pursuits; he has closed with the giants of mortal sense and intellect, wrestled with them, vanquished them, and proved them shadows, and shall he now be amused with a chase of butterflies? He listens scornfully to the proposal and assents to it recklessly; he has no faith in the results, but then he has no fear, nor care for its consequences. The following is an attempt to translate this dialogue from the point where we left off, where a chorus of invisible spirits breaks in with a sort of reply and expostulatory comment to Faust’s anathema.
Thou hast destroy'd it—
This beautiful world,
With powerful arm,
It yields, it shivers,
The demigod’s word obeying,
We are conveying
Its fragments to annihilation,
And saying
A lament for the fair and ruined one.
Mighty,
Earth's mightiest son,
Brightly,
Out of its ruin,
Build it anew in thy breast,
And life with new zest
Recommence,
Which thy gentler sense,
Song still renewing,
With joy shall invest.
Mephistopheles. These little ones
Are of mine, and their tones
How to action and joy they impel thee.
Sagely they tell thee
To fly to the busy haunts of men,
From this lonely den,
Where the blood and the spirit together grow
Stagnant and slow.
Harbour no more this lonely sorrow,
That vulture-like thy life devours;
From men, though bad, thy soul may borrow
Some human thoughts and joyous hours.
Yet deem not that I would confound
With vulgar herds a soul like thine,
No lofty rank or name is mine,
But wilt thou tread with me life's round.
Unite with me, I’ll strive to show
What mortals may enjoy below,