Stirs in my deepest soul this hour? 
What wouldst thou here?  What makes thy heart so sore? 
Unhappy Faust!  I know thee thus no more. 
  Breathe I a magic atmosphere? 
The will to enjoy how strong I felt it,—­
And in a dream of love am now all melted! 
Are we the sport of every puff of air? 
  And if she suddenly should enter now,
How would she thy presumptuous folly humble! 
Big John-o’dreams! ah, how wouldst thou
Sink at her feet, collapse and crumble!

Mephistopheles.  Quick, now!  She comes!  I’m looking at her.

Faust.  Away!  Away!  O cruel fate!

Mephistopheles.  Here is a box of moderate weight;
I got it somewhere else—­no matter! 
Just shut it up, here, in the press,
I swear to you, ’twill turn her senses;
I meant the trifles, I confess,
To scale another fair one’s fences. 
True, child is child and play is play.

Faust.  Shall I?  I know not.

Mephistopheles.  Why delay? 
You mean perhaps to keep the bauble? 
If so, I counsel you to spare
From idle passion hours so fair,
And me, henceforth, all further trouble. 
I hope you are not avaricious! 
I rub my hands, I scratch my head—­
       [He places the casket in the press and locks it up again.]
 (Quick!  Time we sped!)—­
That the dear creature may be led
And moulded by your will and wishes;
And you stand here as glum,
As one at the door of the auditorium,
As if before your eyes you saw
In bodily shape, with breathless awe,
Metaphysics and physics, grim and gray! 
Away!
        [Exit.]

Margaret [with a lamp].  It seems so close, so sultry here.
        [She opens the window.]
Yet it isn’t so very warm out there,
I feel—­I know not how—­oh dear! 
I wish my mother ’ld come home, I declare! 
I feel a shudder all over me crawl—­
I’m a silly, timid thing, that’s all!
        [She begins to sing, while undressing.]
    There was a king in Thule,
    To whom, when near her grave,
    The mistress he loved so truly
    A golden goblet gave.

    He cherished it as a lover,
    He drained it, every bout;
    His eyes with tears ran over,
    As oft as he drank thereout.

    And when he found himself dying,
    His towns and cities he told;
    Naught else to his heir denying
    Save only the goblet of gold.

    His knights he straightway gathers
    And in the midst sate he,
    In the banquet hall of the fathers
    In the castle over the sea.

There stood th’ old knight of liquor,
And drank the last life-glow,
Then flung the holy beaker
Into the flood below.

He saw it plunging, drinking
And sinking in the roar,
His eyes in death were sinking,
He never drank one drop more.
[She opens the press, to put away her clothes,
and discovers the casket.]