BOTH CHORUSES

     When round the summit whirls our flight,
     Then lower, and on the ground alight;
     And far and wide the heather press
     With witchhood’s swarms of wantonness!

(They settle down.)

MEPHISTOPHELES

They crowd and push, they roar and clatter! 
They whirl and whistle, pull and chatter! 
They shine, and spirt, and stink, and burn! 
The true witch-element we learn. 
Keep close! or we are parted, in our turn,
Where art thou?

FAUST (in the distance)

Here!

MEPHISTOPHELES

What! whirled so far astray? 
Then house-right I must use, and clear the way. 
Make room!  Squire Voland comes!  Room, gentle rabble,
room!

Here, Doctor, hold to me:  in one jump we’ll resume
An easier space, and from the crowd be free: 
It’s too much, even for the like of me. 
Yonder, with special light, there’s something shining clearer
Within those bushes; I’ve a mind to see. 
Come on! well slip a little nearer.

FAUST

Spirit of Contradiction!  On!  I’ll follow straight. 
’Tis planned most wisely, if I judge aright: 
We climb the Brocken’s top in the Walpurgis-Night,
That arbitrarily, here, ourselves we isolate.

MEPHISTOPHELES

But see, what motley flames among the heather! 
There is a lively club together: 
In smaller circles one is not alone.

FAUST

Better the summit, I must own: 
There fire and whirling smoke I see. 
They seek the Evil One in wild confusion: 
Many enigmas there might find solution.

MEPHISTOPHELES

But there enigmas also knotted be. 
Leave to the multitude their riot! 
Here will we house ourselves in quiet. 
It is an old, transmitted trade,
That in the greater world the little worlds are made. 
I see stark-nude young witches congregate,
And old ones, veiled and hidden shrewdly: 
On my account be kind, nor treat them rudely! 
The trouble’s small, the fun is great. 
I hear the noise of instruments attuning,—­
Vile din! yet one must learn to bear the crooning. 
Come, come along!  It must be, I declare! 
I’ll go ahead and introduce thee there,
Thine obligation newly earning. 
That is no little space:  what say’st thou, friend? 
Look yonder! thou canst scarcely see the end: 
A hundred fires along the ranks are burning. 
They dance, they chat, they cook, they drink, they court: 
Now where, just tell me, is there better sport?

FAUST