Part 49

MEPHISTOPHELES

I dread to see how such a fate advances.

MARTHA

Then, worthy Sir, improve betimes your chances!

MARGARET

Yes, out of sight is out of mind! Your courtesy an easy grace is; But you have friends in other places, And sensibler than I, you’ll find.

FAUST

Trust me, dear heart! what men call sensible Is oft mere vanity and narrowness.

MARGARET

How so?

FAUST

Ah, that simplicity and innocence ne’er know Themselves, their holy value, and their spell! That meekness, lowliness, the highest graces Which Nature portions out so lovingly—

MARGARET

So you but think a moment’s space on me, All times I’ll have to think on you, all places!

FAUST

No doubt you’re much alone?

MARGARET

Yes, for our household small has grown, Yet must be cared for, you will own. We have no maid: I do the knitting, sewing, sweeping, The cooking, early work and late, in fact; And mother, in her notions of housekeeping, Is so exact! Not that she needs so much to keep expenses down: We, more than others, might take comfort, rather: A nice estate was left us by my father, A house, a little garden near the town. But now my days have less of noise and hurry; My brother is a soldier, My little sister’s dead. True, with the child a troubled life I led, Yet I would take again, and willing, all the worry, So very dear was she.

FAUST

An angel, if like thee!

MARGARET

I brought it up, and it was fond of me. Father had died before it saw the light, And mother’s case seemed hopeless quite, So weak and miserable she lay; And she recovered, then, so slowly, day by day. She could not think, herself, of giving The poor wee thing its natural living; And so I nursed it all alone With milk and water: ’twas my own. Lulled in my lap with many a song, It smiled, and tumbled, and grew strong.

FAUST

The purest bliss was surely then thy dower.

MARGARET

But surely, also, many a weary hour. I kept the baby’s cradle near My bed at night: if ’t even stirred, I’d guess it, And waking, hear. And I must nurse it, warm beside me press it, And oft, to quiet it, my bed forsake, And dandling back and forth the restless creature take, Then at the wash-tub stand, at morning’s break; And then the marketing and kitchen-tending, Day after day, the same thing, never-ending. One’s spirits, Sir, are thus not always good, But then one learns to relish rest and food.

MARTHA

Yes, the poor women are bad off, ’tis true: A stubborn bachelor there’s no converting.