Mephistopheles.  What motley flames light up the heather! 
A merry club is met together,
In a small group one’s not alone.

Faust.  I’d rather be up there, I own! 
See! curling smoke and flames right blue! 
To see the Evil One they travel;
There many a riddle to unravel.

Mephistopheles.  And tie up many another, too. 
Let the great world there rave and riot,
We here will house ourselves in quiet. 
The saying has been long well known: 
In the great world one makes a small one of his own. 
I see young witches there quite naked all,
And old ones who, more prudent, cover. 
For my sake some flight things look over;
The fun is great, the trouble small. 
I hear them tuning instruments!  Curs’d jangle! 
Well! one must learn with such things not to wrangle. 
Come on!  Come on!  For so it needs must be,
Thou shalt at once be introduced by me. 
And I new thanks from thee be earning. 
That is no scanty space; what sayst thou, friend? 
Just take a look! thou scarce canst see the end. 
There, in a row, a hundred fires are burning;
They dance, chat, cook, drink, love; where can be found
Any thing better, now, the wide world round?

Faust.  Wilt thou, as things are now in this condition, Present thyself for devil, or magician?

Mephistopheles.  I’ve been much used, indeed, to going incognito;

But then, on gala-day, one will his order show. 
No garter makes my rank appear,
But then the cloven foot stands high in honor here. 
Seest thou the snail?  Look there! where she comes creeping yonder! 
Had she already smelt the rat,
I should not very greatly wonder. 
Disguise is useless now, depend on that. 
Come, then! we will from fire to fire wander,
Thou shalt the wooer be and I the pander.
         [To a party who sit round expiring embers.]
Old gentlemen, you scarce can hear the fiddle! 
You’d gain more praise from me, ensconced there in the middle,
’Mongst that young rousing, tousing set. 
One can, at home, enough retirement get.

General.  Trust not the people’s fickle favor! 
However much thou mayst for them have done. 
Nations, as well as women, ever,
Worship the rising, not the setting sun.

Minister.  From the right path we’ve drifted far away,
The good old past my heart engages;
Those were the real golden ages,
When such as we held all the sway.

Parvenu.  We were no simpletons, I trow,
And often did the thing we should not;
But all is turning topsy-turvy now,
And if we tried to stem the wave, we could not.

Author.  Who on the whole will read a work today,
Of moderate sense, with any pleasure? 
And as regards the dear young people, they
Pert and precocious are beyond all measure.

Mephistopheles [who all at once appears very old]. 
The race is ripened for the judgment day: 
So I, for the last time, climb the witch-mountain, thinking,
And, as my cask runs thick, I say,
The world, too, on its lees is sinking.