Night. Goethe's Faust rendered into English Verse

The play proper opens with the first scene at Night in Faust's study, which being a very long scene, almost a play on itself, I shall post up in a series of posts.  Faust despairs of external knowledge and decides to turn to magic and mysticism. The book he studies would probably not be "in Nostrodamus' own hand"but more likely that of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (himself a Faustian figure who, according to legend was accompanied by the "devil" in the form of a dog). In Goethe' s own time he may have been thinking of a book like "The Secret Symbols of the Rosicucians" that (suggestively) in the first pages has a picture of an alchemist in a vaulted Gothic chamber in an armchair.

                           NIGHT

A HIGH-VAULTED, NARROW GOTHIC CHAMBER. A RESTLESS FAUST IS SEATED IN HIS ARMCHAIR AT HIS DESK.

FAUST

Ah, how I've studied philosophy

And law and medicine as well,

And saddest yet theology,

Full-through with hot, hard-sweated zeal.

Now here I stand, a poor fool, I'm sure,

No smarter than I was before!

Called master, even doctor; oh, how

For ten long years already now,

Up, down, across and all around it goes-

This pulling my pupils by the nose;

To see we can know nothing true!

That really burns my heart right through.

Sure, I am brighter than those nitwit screechers:

The doctors and masters, clerks and preachers.

I'm plagued by neither doubt nor scruple,

Nor do I tremble at hell or devil-

So too all joy is torn from me. Just so.

I don't pretend I know what's right to know;

I don't pretend that I could teach what could

Make mankind better, turn it to good.

As well I've neither goods nor gold,

Nor honour and the splendour of the world.

No dog would endure this life any more!

So I've given myself to magic's lore,

To see, through spirit strength and speech,

If many secrets come in reach.

With bitter sweat then I'll not go.

Impelled to say what I don't know.

Then I'll know what, at this world's heart,

Is binding in its inmost part

And see the seminal, the creative core,

And rummage around in words no more.

Oh, that you looked, full-shining moon,

For the last time on my pain and gloom.

For I, so many midnights here,

Have held watch at this desk and chair.

Then over a book and paper sea,

Forlorn, old friend, you shone on me,

Could I but go, in your loved light,

To wander on a mountain height,

To glide with spirits round mountain caves,

Drift over fields in your twilight hue,

Be freed from fumes of knowledge, bathe

Myself to health here in your dew!

O no! Am I still stuck within this prison?

This dark wall-hole where even the vision

Of heaven's light is dimmed and stained

In breaking through the painted panes!

Boxed in by book piles here, all spread

With dust, where gnawing worms have been.

Books reach the vaults up overhead,

With smoke-stained papers stuck between;

Case, glass and box surround me too,

With instruments, forced-in, unfurled-

Ancestral junk that blocks the view.

This is my world! Call this a world!

Do you still ask why should your heart

Be bound by fear within your breast?

Why unexplained, a pain so sharp

Blocks every impulse of life's zest?

Instead of living Nature's space

Where God made man to have a home,

Here only mould and fumes embrace

Beast skeletons and dead men's bones.

Up! Flee forth to the far, wide land!

This book of mystery, by my side,

To Nostrodamus' own hand,

Will it not be sufficient guide?

You'll grasp the paths of stars and when

You're taught by Nature too, the force

Of your own soul wells from its source;

How spirit speaks to spirit then.

In vain does dry perception try

To make the sacred symbols clear:

You silent spirits, hovering by;

Now answer me, if you can hear.

HE OPENS THE BOOK AND GLIMPSES THE SIGN OF THE MACROCOSM

Oh, at this sight what rapture streams in me

Through all my senses instantly!

I feel how youthful, sacred bliss of life new-glows;

Through all my nerves and veins it flows.

Was it a god who drew this figure's form

That stills the strife of inner storm

And fills with joy my poor, worn heart;

And with mysterious power imparts

A revelation of the sources

Of Nature's wide-embracing forces?

Am I a god? All grows so light.

Within these pure lines the whole

Of Nature's working lies before my soul.

Now first I know wise ones are right-

"The spirit world's not locked away;

Your sense is shut, your heart is dead.

Disciple, up! Without dismay,

Bathe earthly breast in dawn's fine red!"

HE EXAMINES THE DIAGRAM

How all within the wholeness weave

And with the others work and live.

How heaven's powers pass up and down

And hand the golden buckets on,

With blessing-scented winging,

They press from heaven through earth's realm,
All through the All harmoniously ringing!

What pageantry! Yet only that! Oh, true

And endless Nature, where shall I grasp you?

Where are your breasts? Oh, wellsprings of all life,

On these the earth and heaven hang,

The parched heart seeks you in its strife,

You gush, you nourish- do I pine in vain?