PROKTOPHANTASMIST

You still are here?  Nay, ’tis a thing unheard! 
Vanish, at once!  We’ve said the enlightening word. 
The pack of devils by no rules is daunted: 
We are so wise, and yet is Tegel haunted. 
To clear the folly out, how have I swept and stirred! 
Twill ne’er be clean:  why, ’tis a thing unheard!

THE FAIR ONE

Then cease to bore us at our ball!

PROKTOPHANTASMIST

I tell you, spirits, to your face,
I give to spirit-despotism no place;
My spirit cannot practise it at all.

(The dance continues)

Naught will succeed, I see, amid such revels;
Yet something from a tour I always save,
And hope, before my last step to the grave,
To overcome the poets and the devils.

MEPHISTOPHELES

He now will seat him in the nearest puddle;
The solace this, whereof he’s most assured: 
And when upon his rump the leeches hang and fuddle,
He’ll be of spirits and of Spirit cured.

(To FAUST, who has left the dance:)

Wherefore forsakest thou the lovely maiden,
That in the dance so sweetly sang?

FAUST

Ah! in the midst of it there sprang
A red mouse from her mouth—­sufficient reason.

MEPHISTOPHELES

That’s nothing!  One must not so squeamish be;
So the mouse was not gray, enough for thee. 
Who’d think of that in love’s selected season?

FAUST

Then saw I—.

MEPHISTOPHELES

What?

FAUST

Mephisto, seest thou there,
Alone and far, a girl most pale and fair? 
She falters on, her way scarce knowing,
As if with fettered feet that stay her going. 
I must confess, it seems to me
As if my kindly Margaret were she.

MEPHISTOPHELES

Let the thing be!  All thence have evil drawn: 
It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon. 
Such to encounter is not good: 
Their blank, set stare benumbs the human blood,
And one is almost turned to stone. 
Medusa’s tale to thee is known.

FAUST

Forsooth, the eyes they are of one whom, dying,
No hand with loving pressure closed;
That is the breast whereon I once was lying,—­
The body sweet, beside which I reposed!

MEPHISTOPHELES

Tis magic all, thou fool, seduced so easily! 
Unto each man his love she seems to be.