FAUST (ALONE)
How not to lose all hope he ever turns
Towards trash and triviality;
With greedy hands he grubs for gems, yet he
Is thrilled to find earth's wriggling worms.
Dare such a human voice resound here too,
Where fullness of the spirits was at play?
And yet this time I give my thanks to you,
You poorest of the sons of dust and clay.
You tore me back from my dark, desperate state,
That would have smashed my senses with its force.
Oh, that vision was all-vast, so great,
It rightly made me see myself as dwarfed.
I, image of the Godhead, already I
Drew near the mirror of eternal truth,
And savoured heaven's light like clearest sky,
And shed my merely earth-born sheath.
I, more than Cherub, whose free force unfurled
To flow through veins of Nature's world,
Create and taste the life of gods, or so
With inklings I presumed to know...
How now indeed I have to pay!
One thunder word has swept me right away.
I cannot dare compare with you; and though
I did possess the power to draw you near.
I had no power to hold you with me here.
In that one moment's bliss-filled glow,
I felt myself so small, so great;
Then cruelly you thrust me down,
Back to the human's vague, uncertain fate.
Who'll teach me now? What shall I shun?
Alas, our deeds themselves, as much as sorrow's force,
May halt and hinder our life's course.
What's finest, what the spirit can conceive,
Draws strange and stranger stuff into its weave;
When we attain to this world's good, we deem
What's better fraud or mere delusion's dream.
And higher, glorious feelings, those that gave us life,
Grow torpid in the crush of earthly strife.
Though daydreams once with daring flight were free
To spread with hope towards some eternal realm,
A little space now seems enough for me,
When every fortune fails within the swirl of time.
Deep in the heart's a nest where Care has lain
And there can work with secret pain.
It stirs uneasily, disturbing joy and rest;
It ever dons new masks, confusing life,
It might appear as house and yard, as child and wife,
Flame,
water, poison, dagger's steel.
You
quake at blows you never feel,
And you must ever weep for what you've never lost.
I'm
not godlike! So deep is the feeling that I must
Admit
I'm like the worms that tunnel dust;
That
while they live and feed in dusty joy,
The
wanderer's footsteps bury and destroy.
Is
it not dust that from this wall height here
With
its hundred shelves now narrows in on me,
The
junk, the thousand knick-knacks that I see,
That
push on me in this moth sphere?
Shall
I find here that which I lack?
Perhaps
I'll read a thousand books to glean
That
people everywhere are on the rack,
That
here and there a happy one has been?
You
hollow skull, why are you grinning so,
Except
your brain, like mine, sought carefree day
But
was confused in heavy dusk's last glow,
And
wanting truth, most sadly lost the way?
These
instruments, they're surely mocking me,
With
wheel and cog and cylinder and catch.
I
stood before the gate, you were my key,
But
though your wards are complex, they can't lift the latch.
For
in bright day still filled with mystery
Is
Nature - and you cannot steal her veils.
What
she won't show your spirit will not be
Rough-wrenched
from her with levers or with nails.
These
things I didn't need, old gear,
You're
here because my father used this mess.
You
ancient scroll, you've been smoke-browning here,
As
long as this dim lamp has smouldered at this desk.
Far
better I had wasted my small wares
Than
sweat beneath the burden of this littleness!
What
you inherit from forefather's care
You
need to earn in order to possess.
What's
not used is a heavy weight to bear.
Just
what the moment makes, that's all that's any use.
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