Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain
Only consider, that to-night this mountain
Is all enchanted, and if Jack-a-Lantern
Shows you his way, though you should miss your own, This pinnacle of isolated crag.
You ought not to be too exact with him.
FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES, and IGNIS-FATUUS, in alternate Chorus.
The limits of the sphere of dream,
The bounds of true and false, are past. Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,
Lead us onward, far and fast,
To the wide, the desert waste.
But see, how swift advance and shift, Trees behind trees, row by row,How clift by clift, rocks bend and lift Their frowning foreheads as we go. The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho! How they snort, and how they blow!
Through the mossy sods and stones
Stream and streamlet hurry down,
A rushing throng! A sound of song
Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown!
Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones
Of this bright day, sent down to say
That Paradise on Earth is known,
Resound around, beneath, above.
All we hope and all we love
Finds a voice in this blithe strain,
Which wakens hill and wood and rill,
And vibrates far o'er field and vale,
And which Echo, like the tale
Of old times, repeats again.
Tu-whoo! tu-whoo! near, nearer now
The sound of song, the rushing throng!
Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay,
All awake as if 't were day?
See, with long legs and belly wide,
A salamander in the brake!
Every root is like a snake,
And along the loose hill-side,
With strange contortions through the night,
Curls, to seize or to affright;
And, animated, strong, and many,
They dart forth polypus-antennæ,
To blister with their poison spume
The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom
The many-color'd mice, that thread
The dewy turf beneath our tread,
In troops each other's motions cross,
Through the neath and through the moss;
And, in legions intertangled,
The fire-flies flit, and swarm, and throng,
Till all the mountain depths are spangled.
Tell me, shall we go or stay?
Shall we onward? Come along!
Every thing around is swept
Forward, onward, far away!
Trees and masses intercept
The sight, and wisps on every side
Are puff'd up and multiplied.
One may observe with wonder from this point, How Mammon glows among the mountains.
And strangely through the solid depth below
A melancholy light, like the red dawn,
Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss
Of mountains, lightening hitherward: there rise
Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by;
Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air,
Or the illumined dust of golden flowers;
And now it glides like tender colors spreading;
And now bursts forth in fountains from the earth;
And now it winds, one torrent of broad light,
Through the far valley with a hundred veins;
And now once more within that narrow corner
Masses itself into intensive splendor.
And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground,
Like golden sand scatter'd upon the darkness;
The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains
That hems us in, are kindled.
Rare, in faith! Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate His palace for this festival-it is A pleasure which you had not known before. spy the boisterous guests already.
The children of the wind rage in the air!
With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck!
Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.
Beware! for if with them thou warrest
In their fierce flight towards the wilderness,
Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag
Thy body to a grave in the abyss.
A cloud thickens the night.
Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest!
The owls fly out in strange affright;
The columns of the evergreen palaces
Are split and shatter'd ;
The roots creak, and stretch, and groan;
And ruinously overthrown,
The trunks are crush'd and shatter'd
By the fierce blast's unconquerable stress.
Over each other crack and crash they all,
In terrible and intertangled fall;
And through the ruins of the shaken mountain
The airs hiss and howl-
It is not the voice of the fountain,
Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl.
Dost thou not hear?
Strange accents are ringing
Aloft, afar, anear;
The witches are singing!
The torrent of a raging wizard song
Streams the whole mountain along.
CHORUS OF WITCHES.
The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,
Now to the brocken the witches go;
The mighty multitude here may be seen
Gathering, wizard and witch, below.
Inextricably. Let the great world rage!
We will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings.
"Tis an old custom. Men have ever built
Their own small world in the great world of all. I see young witches naked there, and old ones Wisely attired with greater decency.
Be guided now by me, and you shall buy
A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble.
I hear them tune their instruments-one must
Get used to this damn'd scraping. Come, I'll lead you
Among them; and what there you do and see,
As a fresh compact 'twixt us two shall be.
How say you now? this space is wide enough-
Look forth, you cannot see the end of it-
A hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they
Who throng around them seem innumerable;
Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love,
And cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend,
What is there better in the world than this?
In introducing us, do you assume
The character of wizard or of devil?
MEPHISTOPHELES.
In truth, I generally go about
In strict incognito; and yet one likes
To wear one's orders upon gala-days.
I have no ribbon at my knee; but here
At home, the cloven foot is honorable.
See you that snail there?-she comes creeping up,
And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something.
I could not, if I would, mask myself here.
Come now, we'll go about from fire to fire:
I'll be the pimp, and you shall be the lover.
[To some Old Women, who are sitting round a
heap of glimmering coals.
Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here?
You ought to be with the young rioters
Right in the thickest of the revelry-
But every one is best content at home.
GENERAL.
Who dare confide in right or a just claim?
So much as I had done for them! and now-
With women and the people 'tis the same,
Youth will stand foremost ever,-age may go
To the dark grave unhonor'd.
Now-a-days
People assert their rights: they go too far;
But as for me, the good old times I praise;
Then we were all in all, 't was something worth
One's while to be in place and wear a star;
That was indeed the golden age on earth.
PARVENU.*
We too are active, and we did and do
What we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now
Will seize, whilst all things are whirl'd round and round,
A spoke of Fortune's wheel, and keep our ground.
Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense
And ponderous volume? 'tis impertinence
To write what none will read, therefore will I
To please the young and thoughtless people try.
MEPHISTOPHELES (who at once appears to have grown
very old).
I find the people ripe for the last day,
Since I last came up to the wizard mountain;
And as my little cask runs turbid now,
So is the world drain'd to the dregs.
Gentlemen; do not hurry on so fast,
And lose the chance of a good pennyworth
I have a pack full of the choicest wares
Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle
Is nothing like what may be found on earth;
Nothing that in a moment will make rich
Men and the world with fine malicious mischiet
There is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowi
From which consuming poison may be drain'd
By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel,
The price of an abandon'd maiden's shame;
No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose
Or stabs the wearer's enemy in the back;
No
At last he will sit down in some foul puddle!
That is his way of solacing himself;
Until some leech, diverted with his gravity,
Cures him of spirits and the spirit together.
[To FAUST, who has seceded from the dance.
Why do you let that fair girl pass from you,
Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?
A red mouse in the middle of her singing
Sprang from her mouth.
WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewilder'd, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
That was all right, my friend; Of objects and of persons pass'd like things
Be it enough that the mouse was not gray.
Do not disturb your hour of happiness
With close consideration of such trifles.
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.
And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepen'd the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darken'd her dark locks as moonlight doth,--
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious,-but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight.
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less heavenly fair-her face was bow'd,
And as she pass'd, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirror'd in the polish'd marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And ever as she went, her light fair feet
Erased these images.
The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,
Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been another's
Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
Some few admiring what can ever lure
Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat; a thing
Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.
*This fragment is part of a poem which Mr. Shelley in tended to write, founded on a story to be found in the first volume of a book entitled "L'Osservatore Fiorentino."
But they are all dispersed-and, lo! she stands
Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
Alone within the garden now her own;
And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,
The music of the merry marriage-bells,
Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;-
Absorb'd like one within a dream who dreams
That he is dreaming, until slumber seems
A mockery of itself-when suddenly
Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
With agony,
with sorrow, and with pride,
He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,
And said "Is this thy faith?" and then as one
Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise
And look upon his day of life with eyes
Which weep
in vain that they can dream no more,
Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
To shriek or faint, and check'd the stifling blood
Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued
Said "Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
Of parents, chance, or custom, time or change,
Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,
Or wilder'd looks, or words, or evil speech,
With all their stings[ ] can impeach
Our love, we love not:-if the grave which hides
The victim from the tyrant, and divides
The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart
Imperious inquisition to the heart
That is another's, could dissever ours,
We love not."-" What, do not the silent hours
Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal-bed?
Is not that ring❞—a pledge, he would have said,
Of broken vows, but she with patient look
The golden circle from her finger took,
And said" Accept this token of my faith,
The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
And I am dead, or shall be soon-my knell
Will mix its music with that merry bell:
Does it not sound as if they sweetly said,
We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed?'
The flowers upon my bridal-chamber strewn
Wii. serve unfaded for my bier-so soon
To even the dying violet will not die
Belo e nevia. The strong puan.asy
Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
And quench'd the crimson life upon her cheek,
And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
Round her, which chill'd the burning noon with fear,
Making her but an image of the thought,
Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
News of the terrors of the coming time.
Like an accuser branded with the crime
He would have cast on a beloved friend,
Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
The pale betrayer-he then with vain repentance
Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence-
Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
The compound voice of women and of men
Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
Was led amid the admiring company
Back to the palace,—and her maidens soon
Changed her attire for the afternoon,
And left her at her own request to keep
An hour of quiet and rest-like one asleep
With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
Pale in the light of the declining day.
Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
Of love, and admiration, and delight
Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,
Kindling a momentary Paradise.
This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude,
On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
Falls, and the dew of music more divine
Tempers the deep emotions of the time
To spirits cradled in a sunny clime :—
How many meet, who never yet have met,
To part too soon, but never to forget.
How many saw the beauty, power and wit
Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet;
But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn,
As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn,
And unprophetic of the coming hours,
The matin winds from the expanded flowers
Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
From every living heart which it possesses,
As if the future and the past were all
Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
Treasured i' the instant;-so Gherardi's hall
Laugh'd in the mirth of its lord's festival,
Till some one ask'd-"Where is the Bride?" And then
A bride's-maid went,-and ere she came again
A silence fell upon the guests-a pause
Of expectation, as when beauty awes
All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld:
Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quell'd ;-
For whispers pass'd from mouth to ear which drew
The color from the hearer's checks, and flew
Louder and swifter round the company;
And then Gherardi enter'd with an eye
Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.
They found Ginevra dead! if it be death,
To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
And open eyes, whose fix'd and glassy light
Mock'd at the speculation they had own'd.
If it be death, when there is felt around
A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night
Of thought we know thus much of death,—no mone
Than the unborn dream of our life before
Their barks are wreck'd on its inhospitable shore.
The marriage-feast and its solemnity
Was turn'do funeral pomp-the company
With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
Alone, but sorrow mix'd with sad surprise
Loosen'd the springs of pity in all eyes,
On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
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