Part 7

FAUST

Yes, when the priest comedian is by nature, As haply now and then the case may be.

WAGNER

Ah, when one studies thus, a prisoned creature, That scarce the world on holidays can see,— Scarce through a glass, by rare occasion, How shall one lead it by persuasion?

FAUST

You’ll ne’er attain it, save you know the feeling, Save from the soul it rises clear, Serene in primal strength, compelling The hearts and minds of all who hear. You sit forever gluing, patching; You cook the scraps from others’ fare; And from your heap of ashes hatching A starveling flame, ye blow it bare! Take children’s, monkeys’ gaze admiring, If such your taste, and be content; But ne’er from heart to heart you’ll speak inspiring, Save your own heart is eloquent!

WAGNER

Yet through delivery orators succeed; I feel that I am far behind, indeed.

FAUST

Seek thou the honest recompense! Beware, a tinkling fool to be! With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery; And if thou’rt moved to speak in earnest, What need, that after words thou yearnest? Yes, your discourses, with their glittering show, Where ye for men twist shredded thought like paper, Are unrefreshing as the winds that blow The rustling leaves through chill autumnal vapor!

WAGNER

Ah, God! but Art is long, And Life, alas! is fleeting. And oft, with zeal my critic-duties meeting, In head and breast there’s something wrong.

How hard it is to compass the assistance Whereby one rises to the source! And, haply, ere one travels half the course Must the poor devil quit existence.

FAUST

Is parchment, then, the holy fount before thee, A draught wherefrom thy thirst forever slakes? No true refreshment can restore thee, Save what from thine own soul spontaneous breaks.

WAGNER

Pardon! a great delight is granted When, in the spirit of the ages planted, We mark how, ere our times, a sage has thought, And then, how far his work, and grandly, we have brought.

FAUST

O yes, up to the stars at last! Listen, my friend: the ages that are past Are now a book with seven seals protected: What you the Spirit of the Ages call Is nothing but the spirit of you all, Wherein the Ages are reflected. So, oftentimes, you miserably mar it! At the first glance who sees it runs away. An offal-barrel and a lumber-garret, Or, at the best, a Punch-and-Judy play, With maxims most pragmatical and hitting, As in the mouths of puppets are befitting!

WAGNER

But then, the world—the human heart and brain! Of these one covets some slight apprehension.

FAUST

Yes, of the kind which men attain! Who dares the child’s true name in public mention? The few, who thereof something really learned, Unwisely frank, with hearts that spurned concealing, And to the mob laid bare each thought and feeling, Have evermore been crucified and burned. I pray you, Friend, ’tis now the dead of night; Our converse here must be suspended.

WAGNER

I would have shared your watches with delight, That so our learned talk might be extended. To-morrow, though, I’ll ask, in Easter leisure, This and the other question, at your pleasure. Most zealously I seek for erudition: Much do I know—but to know all is my ambition.

FAUST (solus)

That brain, alone, not loses hope, whose choice is To stick in shallow trash forevermore,— Which digs with eager hand for buried ore, And, when it finds an angle-worm, rejoices!

Dare such a human voice disturb the flow, Around me here, of spirit-presence fullest? And yet, this once my thanks I owe To thee, of all earth’s sons the poorest, dullest! For thou hast torn me from that desperate state Which threatened soon to overwhelm my senses: The apparition was so giant-great, It dwarfed and withered all my soul’s pretences!