Yet, finally, the weary god is sinking;
The new-born impulse fires my mind,—­
I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking,
The Day before me and the Night behind,
Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me,—­
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade. 
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me. 
Yet in each soul is born the pleasure
Of yearning onward, upward and away,
When o’er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure,
The lark sends down his flickering lay,—­
When over crags and piny highlands
The poising eagle slowly soars,
And over plains and lakes and islands
The crane sails by to other shores.

WAGNER

I’ve had, myself, at times, some odd caprices,
But never yet such impulse felt, as this is. 
One soon fatigues, on woods and fields to look,
Nor would I beg the bird his wing to spare us: 
How otherwise the mental raptures bear us
From page to page, from book to book! 
Then winter nights take loveliness untold,
As warmer life in every limb had crowned you;
And when your hands unroll some parchment rare and old,
All Heaven descends, and opens bright around you!

FAUST

One impulse art thou conscious of, at best;
O, never seek to know the other! 
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother. 
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces. 
If there be airy spirits near,
’Twixt Heaven and Earth on potent errands fleeing,
Let them drop down the golden atmosphere,
And bear me forth to new and varied being! 
Yea, if a magic mantle once were mine,
To waft me o’er the world at pleasure,
I would not for the costliest stores of treasure—­
Not for a monarch’s robe—­the gift resign.

WAGNER

Invoke not thus the well-known throng,
Which through the firmament diffused is faring,
And danger thousand-fold, our race to wrong. 
In every quarter is preparing. 
Swift from the North the spirit-fangs so sharp
Sweep down, and with their barbed points assail you;
Then from the East they come, to dry and warp
Your lungs, till breath and being fail you: 
If from the Desert sendeth them the South,
With fire on fire your throbbing forehead crowning,
The West leads on a host, to cure the drouth
Only when meadow, field, and you are drowning. 
They gladly hearken, prompt for injury,—­
Gladly obey, because they gladly cheat us;
From Heaven they represent themselves to be,
And lisp like angels, when with lies they meet us. 
But, let us go!  ’Tis gray and dusky all: 
The air is cold, the vapors fall. 
At night, one learns his house to prize:—­
Why stand you thus, with such astonished eyes? 
What, in the twilight, can your mind so trouble?