With wilful cavil would diminish,
With grinning masks of life prevent
My mind its fairest work to finish! 
Then, too, when night descends, how anxiously
Upon my couch of sleep I lay me: 
There, also, comes no rest to me,
But some wild dream is sent to fray me. 
The God that in my breast is owned
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
The God, above my powers enthroned,
He cannot change external forces. 
So, by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest!

MEPHISTOPHELES

And yet is never Death a wholly welcome guest.

FAUST

O fortunate, for whom, when victory glances,
The bloody laurels on the brow he bindeth! 
Whom, after rapid, maddening dances,
In clasping maiden-arms he findeth! 
O would that I, before that spirit-power,
Ravished and rapt from life, had sunken!

MEPHISTOPHELES

And yet, by some one, in that nightly hour,
A certain liquid was not drunken.

FAUST

Eavesdropping, ha! thy pleasure seems to be.

MEPHISTOPHELES

Omniscient am I not; yet much is known to me.

FAUST

Though some familiar tone, retrieving
My thoughts from torment, led me on,
And sweet, clear echoes came, deceiving
A faith bequeathed from Childhood’s dawn,
Yet now I curse whate’er entices
And snares the soul with visions vain;
With dazzling cheats and dear devices
Confines it in this cave of pain! 
Cursed be, at once, the high ambition
Wherewith the mind itself deludes! 
Cursed be the glare of apparition
That on the finer sense intrudes! 
Cursed be the lying dream’s impression
Of name, and fame, and laurelled brow! 
Cursed, all that flatters as possession,
As wife and child, as knave and plow! 
Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures
To restless action spurs our fate! 
Cursed when, for soft, indulgent leisures,
He lays for us the pillows straight! 
Cursed be the vine’s transcendent nectar,—­
The highest favor Love lets fall! 
Cursed, also, Hope!—­cursed Faith, the spectre! 
And cursed be Patience most of all!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS (invisible)

     Woe! woe! 
     Thou hast it destroyed,
     The beautiful world,
     With powerful fist: 
     In ruin ’tis hurled,
     By the blow of a demigod shattered! 
     The scattered
     Fragments into the Void we carry,
     Deploring
     The beauty perished beyond restoring. 
     Mightier
     For the children of men,
     Brightlier
     Build it again,
     In thine own bosom build it anew! 
     Bid the new career
     Commence,
     With clearer sense,
     And the new songs of cheer
     Be sung thereto!