{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_24556/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_24556","id":"gutenberg_24556","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24556","summary":null,"tags":["American drama -- 20th century","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas"],"text":"Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n                        THE MODERN DRAMA SERIES\n                       EDITED BY EDWIN BJOeRKMAN\n\n\n                               MR. FAUST\n\n                                  BY\n\n                         ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE\n\n                               NEW YORK\n                          MITCHELL KENNERLEY\n                                MCMXIII\n\n\n                           COPYRIGHT 1913 BY\n                          MITCHELL KENNERLEY\n\n                          THE.PLIMPTON.PRESS\n                          NORWOOD.MASS.U.S.A\n\n\n\n\n                               CONTENTS\n\n\n                                            PAGE\n\nINTRODUCTION                                 vii\n\nLIST OF PLAYS BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE          x\n\nMR. FAUST                                      1\n\n\n\n\n    _The author gratefully acknowledges his debt for permission\n        to reprint one of the lyrics herein, which appeared\n        originally in \"Poetry.\"_\n\n\n\n\n                             INTRODUCTION\n\n\nThrough all the work of Arthur Davison Ficke runs a note of bigness\nthat compels attention even when one feels that he is still groping\nboth for form and thought. In \"Mr. Faust\" this note has assumed\ncommanding proportions, while at the same time the uncertainty\nmanifest in some of the earlier work has almost wholly disappeared.\nIntellectually as well as artistically, this play shows a surprising\nmaturity. It impresses me, for one, as the expression of a\nwell-rounded and very profound philosophy of life--and this philosophy\nstands in logical and sympathetic relationship to what the western\nworld to-day regards as its most advanced thought. The evolutionary\nconception of life is the foundation of that philosophy, which,\nhowever, has little or nothing in common with the materialistic and\ndogmatic evolutionism of the last century. The work sprung from that\nphilosophy is full of the new sense of mystery, which makes the men of\nto-day realize that the one attitude leading nowhere is that of\ndenial. Faith and doubt walk hand in hand, each one being to the other\ncheck and goad alike. And with this new freedom to believe as well as\nto question, man becomes once more the centre of his known universe.\nBut there he stands, humbly proud, not as the arrogant master of a\n\"dead\" world, but merely as the foremost servant of a life-principle\nwhich asserts itself in the grain of sand as in the brain of man.\n\nYet \"Mr. Faust\" is by no means a philosophical or moral tract. It is,\nfirst of all and throughout, a living, breathing work of art, instinct\nwith beauty and faithful in its every line to the principle laid down\nby its author in the preface to one of his earlier volumes: \"Poetical\nimagination must fail altogether if it descends from its natural\nsphere and assumes work which is properly that of economic or\npolitical experience. Nor can it usefully urge its own peculiar\nintuitions as things of practical validity.\"\n\nMr. Ficke was born in 1883 at Davenport, Iowa, and there he is still\nliving, although I understand that he has since then been wandering in\nso many other regions, physical and spiritual, that he can hardly call\nit his home. He graduated from Harvard in 1904 and spent the next\ntravelling in all sorts of strange and poetic places--Japan, India,\nthe Greek mountains, the Aegean Islands. Returning to the United\nStates, he studied law and was admitted to the Bar in 1908. While\nstudying, he taught English for a year at the University of Iowa,\nlecturing on the history of the Arthurian Legends.\n\nHe was a mere boy when he began to write, turning from the first to\nthe metrical form of expression and remaining faithful to it in most\nof his subsequent efforts. His poems and essays have been printed in\nalmost all the leading magazines. So far he has published five volumes\nof verse: \"From the Isles,\" a series of lyrics of the Aegean Sea; \"The\nHappy Princess,\" a romantic narrative poem; \"The Earth Passion,\" a\nseries of poems which may be characterized as the effort of a\nstar-gazer to find satisfaction in the things of the earth; \"The\nBreaking of Bonds,\" a Shelleyan drama of social unrest, where he has\ntried to formulate a hope for our final emergence from the maelstrom\nof class-conflict; and \"Twelve Japanese Painters,\" a group of poems\nexpressive of the peculiar and alluring charm of the great Japanese\npainters and their world of remote beauty.\n\n                                             EDWIN BJOeRKMAN.\n\n\n\n\n                 LIST OF PLAYS BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE\n\n\n    THE BREAKING OF BONDS, 1910\n    MR. FAUST, 1913\n\n\n\n\n                               MR. FAUST\n\n\n                              INSCRIPTION\n\n\n        Pale Goethe, Marlowe, Lessing--calm your fears!\n    None plots to steal your laurel wreaths away.\n    Approach; take tickets: you shall witness here\n    The unromantic Faustus of to-day--\n\n        A Faustus whom no mystic choirs sustain,\n    No wizard fiends blind with prodigious spell.\n    The mortal earth shall serve him as domain\n    Whether he mount to Heaven or sink to Hell.\n\n        Yet, mount or sink, your lights around him shine.\n    And there shall flow, bubbling with woe or mirth,\n    From these new bottles your familiar wine,\n    As ancient as man's rule upon the earth.\n\n\n\n\n                               MR. FAUST\n\n                             THE FIRST ACT\n\n_The scene is the library of John Faust, a large handsome room\npanelled in dark oak and lined with rows of books in open\nbook-shelves. On the right is a carved white stone fireplace, with\ndeep chairs before it. In the far left corner of the room, on a\npedestal, stands a stiff bust of George Washington. Near it hangs a\nwonderful Titian portrait, a thing of another world. The furniture\nlooks as if it were, and probably is, plunder from the palace of some\nprince of the Renaissance._\n\n_A fire is burning in the fireplace; it, and several shaded lights,\nmake a subdued brilliancy in the room. Before the fire sits John\nFaust. Brander and Oldham, both in evening dress, lounge comfortably\nin chairs near Faust. All three are smoking, and tall highball glasses\nstand within their reach._\n\nBRANDER\n\nYou are a thorn to me, a thorn in the flesh.\nContagiously you bring to me mistrust\nOf all my landmarks, when, as here to-night,\nOut of the midst of every pleasant gift\nThe world can offer you, you raise your voice\nIn scoffing irony against each face,\nForm, action, motive, that together make\nYour life, and ours.\n\nFAUST\n\n                Dear man, I did not mean\nTo send my poor jokes burrowing like a mole\nBeneath your prized foundations.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                                 Not alone\nYour attitude to-night; you always seem\nAs if withholding from all days and deeds\nMoving around you--from our life and yours--\nYour full assent.\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Dear Brander! Is it true\nI am as bad as that? Well, though I were,\nWhy should it trouble you? If you find sport\nIn this strange game, this fevered interplay,\nThis hodge-podge crazy-quilt which we are pleased\nTo call our life--why, like it! And say: Damned\nBe all who are not with me!\n\nBRANDER\n\n                            Are not you?\n\nFAUST\n\nI claim the criminal's privilege, and decline\nTo answer.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n           Faust, might I presume so far\nAs to suggest that I should like a drink\nBefore you two start breaking furniture\nOver this matter?\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Certainly; I beg\nYour pardon; I neglected you.\n\n     (_He busies himself with the glasses_)\n\n                               No, no,\nWe won't wage combat over this. You're right,\nDoubtless, as usual, Brander. I have not\nYour fortunate placidity of mind,\nAnd I get grumpy.\n\n                  Come, fill up your glass;\nAnd let us drink to the glories of the world.\nDown with the cynic!\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     Down with him, indeed!\nAnd may he cease to trouble you. The world\nIs pretty glorious when a man is young,\nAs we are, and so many splendid choices\nLie all around him. There have never been\nSuch opportunities as now are spread\nBefore us. Men are doing mighty things\nTo-day. A critic tells me that last night\nWullf at the opera sang \"_La ci darem_\"\nWith an artistic brilliancy of tone\nThat never has been heard on any stage\nAnywhere in the world. You moped at home,\nDoubtless; but it was wonderful, on my word.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nWhom did you go with?\n\nBRANDER\n\n                      Midge.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                             Ah, Midge again!\nI thought so....\n\nBRANDER\n\n                 Well, I don't know why I shouldn't.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nThose rosy-toned remarks gave you away.\nPerhaps 'twas not \"Don Juan\" that last night\nWas at its best, but Midge. Where did you sit?\n\nBRANDER\n\nUp in the gallery.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                   The top one?\n\nBRANDER\n\n                                 Yes.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nOnce more, I thought so. You and Midge would look\nNice in a box! Yes, I will pay for one\nIf you will take it.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     Oh, leave me alone!\n\nFAUST\n\nWho is this \"Midge\" you speak of?\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                                  Midge, dear Faust,\nIs short for Margaret; which, you may guess,\nDescribes a lady of the female sex;\nSaid person being serviceably employed\nAs maid-of-all-work for some ancient dame\nIn Brander's own apartment house. She has,\nBeside what other virtues I know not,\nA most bewitching ankle and a taste\nFor opera. And dear Brander's kindly heart\nIs so moved by the sight of these combined,\nHe sometimes sneaks, by lonely alley-ways,\nWith his fair Midge, and in the gallery\nHigh out of sight of all of us enjoys\nHer and the opera.\n\nFAUST\n\n                     I did not know\nYou had a lady-love.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     It's hardly that!\nBut she's a mighty jolly little thing.\n\nFAUST\n\nWhat sort of girl is she?\n\nBRANDER\n\n                         A mighty nice one!\nFull of all kinds of happiness; but shy.\nI'd like to see some rounder try to speak\nTo her on Broadway. She looks like a lady!\n\nFAUST\n\nThat is too bad.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                Oh, pshaw! Don't lecture me;\nI'm not a saint; in fact, few of us are.\n\nFAUST\n\nUnfortunately not. I least of all.\nAnd yet I wonder if.... However, I\nDo not presume to lecture you. Remember\nOne thing, though, as my friend. Your Midge has deeps\nNot pleasant under her if you let go.\n\nBRANDER\n\nOh, I will not let go!... Not yet, at least.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nFaust really means it, strange as it may seem.\nOf late he has turned moralist.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                Not quite:\nBut just a little tired of pursuits\nThat end regretfully.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                    Well, don't pursue....\n\nBRANDER\n\n    (_Goes to the window and raises the shade_)\n\nSee, what a night it is! The stars are out\nAs if a bucketful of them had spilled\nAcross the sky. And here we sit like owls,\nBlinking and staring at a little fire\nWhen heaven is burning! I'm afraid it's time\nFor me to leave this owlish parliament;\nAnd I shall probably knock holes in half\nThe windows of the town as I walk home\nStar-gazingly. And here it's after twelve!\nI might have guessed it from the fatal fact\nThat we'd begun to talk philosophy:\nNo sane man ever does, except in hours\nWhen by all rights he should be sound asleep.\nGood night to both of you. And don't stay up\nTalking till morning.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                     Well, good night.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                      Good night,\nBrander, I'm sorry you must go: come in\nQuite soon again, and I will try to be\nLess disagreeable than I was to-night.\n\n    [_Brander goes out._\n\nOLDHAM\n\nI'll bet he takes an arc-light for a star!\n\nFAUST\n\nHe is warm-hearted; I am fond of him.\nBut Midge!... However, one can say no more....\n\nOLDHAM\n\nHe's a good fellow; but he tires me\nSometimes.\n\nFAUST\n\n           Dear boy, I envy him.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                                 Of course,\nAnd so do I; but I would not exchange\nHeads for a kingdom.\n\nFAUST\n\n                     Are you so fond, then,\nOf what's in yours?\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                    No, but at least I have\nA certain faint perception of the gilded\nAnd quite preposterous crudeness of our days--\nThe sordid sickness of his life, and ours;\nAnd that is something to be thankful for.\n\nFAUST\n\nGratitude is a graceful gift.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                              Come, come!\nWhat snake has bitten you, that to your lips\nA poisoned irony so bitter springs\nTo-night?\n\nFAUST\n\n          I am revolving in my brain\nThis serious question: whether 'tis not best\nThat one turn humorist. The mind that seeks\nHoliness, finds it seldom; who pursues\nBeauty perhaps shall in a lengthened life\nFind it perfected only once or twice.\nBut if one's quest were humor--what rich stores,\nWhat tropic jungles of it, lie to hand\nAt every moment, everywhere one turns--\nWhat luscious meadows for the humorist!\n\nOLDHAM\n\nNo--for the satirist! There is no humor\nIn what you see and I see when we look\nOn this crude world wherein our lives are spent--\nThis sordid sphere where we are but spectators--\nThis crass grim modern spectacle of lives\nTorn with consuming lust of one desire--\nGold, gold, forever gold-- Or do you find\nHumor in that?\n\nFAUST\n\n               It might be found, perhaps:\nThe joke's on someone!\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                       There's no joke in it!\nIt is the waste, the pitiful waste of life!\nMen--slaves to gather gold--become then slaves\nBeneath its gathered weight. For this one hope,\nAll finer longings perish at their birth.\nMen's eyes to-day envy no sage or seer\nOr conqueror except his triumphs be\nIn this base sphere of commerce. The stars go out\nIn factory smoke; the spirit wanes and pales\nIn poisoned air of greed. It is an age\nOf traders and of tricksters; all the high\nAnd hounded malefactors of great wealth\nDiffer from the masses, in their wealth, indeed;\nBut in their malefaction, not at all.\nYour grocer and my butcher have at heart\nThe selfsame aims as he to whom we pay\nTribute for every pound of coal we burn.\nTheir scope is narrower, but their act the same\nAs his--against whose millions all the tongues\nOf little tricksters in each corner store\nBabble and rail and shriek!\n\nFAUST\n\n                            Almost you do\nPersuade me to turn humorist on the spot!\nWas ever, since Gargantua, such a vine\nHeavy with bursting clusters of the grape\nOf humor?\n\nOLDHAM\n\n          Of corruption! You may laugh;\nBut there's in all your laughter hardly more\nMirth than in my upbraidings. Ah, I grow\nSo weary of this low-horizoned scene,\nOur generation; I am always drawn\nIn thought toward that great noon of human life\nWhen in the streets of Florence walked the powers\nAnd princes of the earth--Politian, Pico,\nAngelo, Leonardo, Botticelli--\nAnd a half-hundred more of starry-eyed\nSons of the morning, in whose hearts the god\nStruggled unceasing. Ah, those lucent brains,\nThose bright imaginations, those keen souls,\nArrowy toward each target where truth's gold\nGlimmered, or beauty's! Those were days indeed;\nWe shall not look upon their like again.\n\nFAUST\n\nI am not sure.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                Then take my word for it!\n\nFAUST\n\nI am not sure; the lamentable fact\nTo me seems otherwise. For I believe\nThat this vile age of commerce and corruption\nWhich you describe in very eloquent terms,\nIs still, upon the whole, the best that yet\nHas graced our earth. I think not more than you\nAm I in love with it; but, looking back,\nI fail to see a better, though I peer\nInto remote arboreal history.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nWhen I was six, my teachers taught me that.\nWhy, one would think that you had never heard\nOf Greece or Italy!\n\nFAUST\n\n                    And what were they?\nYour Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams,\nLies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood\nAnd agony: such tortures as we scarce\nDream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench\nOf slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones--\nYes, even the Papal throne--draw me not back\nWith longing toward it. Rich that time might be\nIf one were Michael Angelo; but how\nIf one were peasant, or meek householder,\nWhen the Free Captains ravaged to and fro,\nAnd peoples were the merest pawns of kings\nEnslaved by mistresses? The more I look,\nThe more evaporates that golden haze\nWhich cloaks the past; the more I doubt if men\nHad ever in their breasts more lofty souls\nThan those we know. And I am glad to be\nA citizen of this material age.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nCongratulations!--tempered with surprise\nAt finding you, beneath your lion's skin,\nSo sweet an optimist--whose faith can find\nAll's for the best; and the best, this great year\nNineteen Thirteen.\n\nFAUST\n\n                    Hardly so strong as that.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nYes, tell me that the golden age has come!\n\nFAUST\n\nI quarrel not with ages--but with man;\nWhose life such play and folly seems--for all\nIts sweat and agony--that laughter lies\nThe sole escape from madness. I peruse\nThe present and the past, only to find\nMountains of human effort piled aloft\nLike the Egyptian Pyramids, and toward\nNo end save folly....\n\n                      All is foolishness!\nIn Argolis, a woman, somewhat vain,\nPreferred a fop to her own rightful lord\nAnd ran away; and then for ten long years\nThe might of Hellas on the Trojan plain\nGrappled in conflict such as had been mete\nTo guard Olympus, and Scamander ran\nRed with heroic blood-drops. And they got\nThe woman. And it all was foolishness!...\nThat was your Golden Age. I hope you like it.\n\nFoolishness!... Once a mariner set forth,\nWith all the fires of heaven lit in his breast\nAnd godlike courage on his brow, to find\nNew worlds beyond the unknown wastes of sea.\nHe sailed; he found; he died in rusty chains:\nSo that, to-day, the vermin of all climes\nMay thither flock, and there renew the old\nFamiliar toil toward utter foolishness....\n\nWhy all this labor unto vanity?\nWhy all this straining toward an empty end?\n\nOLDHAM\n\nAh, you forget what Beauty was to them!\nWe are quite lost to that high touch to-day.\nBeauty hung over them, a star to draw\nMen's aspiration. That divides them quite\nFrom our debased modernity.\n\nFAUST\n\n                            Dear Oldham!\nMy dear delightful visionary Oldham!\nWhat an adorer of the past you are!\n\nOLDHAM\n\nYes, I adore it sacredly, and loathe\nTo-day's whole content--except you! I loathe it\nSo much that, if I had the dynamite,\nI'd blow it all--and you and me ourselves--\nInto a nebula of dust.... Ah, well,\nWe hardly can decide these things to-night,\nCan we? I must be off, little as I like,\nTo end our midnight talking.\n\nFAUST\n\n                             Oh, not yet!\n\nOLDHAM\n\nI must; this is not good for me: I fear\nTo let myself dwell on these restless thoughts\nWhich with a perilous longing sometimes make\nMy actual days so bitter that despair\nGrips me in horror. And besides, I'm due\nTo pick my brother up. I have, you see,\nThe limousine to-night, and that entails\nIts obligations. Dear modernity!\nWhose Saviour is the limousine!... Good night!\n\nFAUST\n\nGood night. May all the Furies and the Gorgons\nOf Greece and Florence leave you in repose\nTo dream to-night of white-limbed goddesses\nAnd painters like archangels!\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                              I deserve it!\nAnd yet I fear they will not be so kind....\nSleep is no friend to me these many nights.\nI do not know what wrong I can have done\nThat so offends her she will none of me.\nOne of these days, she will carry it too far....\n\n[_Oldham goes out. Faust turns out all but two of\nthe lights; then seats himself wearily before the fire.\nThe room is dark around his lighted figure._\n\nFAUST\n\nThe play drags, and the players would begone,\nOut of this theatre of tinsel days\nAnd lights and tawdry glamour, out to face\nEven the blank of night, the icy stars,\nThe vast abysses. What the gallery-gods\nCould give, they well have given; but deities\nInscrutabler than they annul all gifts\nWith one gift more--the restless mind that peers\nPast fame, friends, learning, fortune, to enquire:\nWhither? Whither? Whither? And no answer comes\nTo the cold player's lips....\n\n                              I see too much\nTo make my peace with any ordered role\nAnd play it heartily. To-day's thin coin\nPays not my labors; and to-morrow's hope\nHas never been authenticated to me\nBy a fulfilling hour when I might say:\n\"Lo, this is what I hoped!\" The vision flies\nAs I advance; while always far ahead\nIts glow makes dim the color of my days;\nAnd I loathe life because my hope is fairer,\nAnd know my hope a lie. Thus, Faust, my friend,\nYou damn yourself ingeniously to hells\nOf rich variety....\n\n                    The eyes of men\nEnvy me as I pass them in the street--\nMe, whom sufficient fortune, moderate fame,\nHave made completely happy in their sight.\nWell, I am no barbarian: let them have\nThe bliss of envying.... But I am sick\nWith the hour's emptiness; and great desire\nFills me for those high beauties which my dreams\nYearn ever toward. I am weary; I would go\nOut to some golden sunset-lighted land\nOf silence.\n\n            I have been athirst of dreams!\nAnd all earth's common goals and gifts have been\nBut fuel to flame. O strange and piteous heart!\nO credulous and visionary heart!\nDesirous of the infinite--from defeat\nArising still to grope again for light\nAnd the high word of vision! And in vain!\nTill, not having found, its bitterness corrodes\nInward--like one betrayed by his last god....\n\nStrange, that my father was a worthy man!\nPerhaps 'tis his blood in me that withholds\nUnreasoning my hand from washing clear\nThis scribbled slate with one quick tide of peace.\nWould more of him were in me! that like him\nI might spend eagerly a useful life\nIn medicining miserable men\nWho were better dead--employ my force\nTo aid a world within whose marrow dwells\nAn evil none can cure, an agony\nBeyond our dearest aiding.\n\n                           Ah, well, well!\nSuch are the great men of this busy world,\nWhose ardor for the game is anodyne\nAgainst its buffets, and intoxicant\nTo lend it reveller's meaning. Ardor given,\nAll things are possible....\n\n                            You, old marble-face,\nWho front me from the corner with that grave\nVirtuous Father-of-your-Country look,\nI pay you my respects; you are a light\nOf leading, as I see you now. Your soul\nWas never shaken by convulsive doubts\nOf life or man or liberty; you built\nUnsceptical of bricks, but such as lay\nTo hand you took, nor did your purpose shake\nAt prescient thought of how your edifice\nMight be turned pest-house some day. Undismayed\nBy doubt, you rose, and in heroic mould\nLed--dauntless, patient, incorruptible--\nA riot over taxes. Not a star\nIn all the vaults of heaven could trouble you\nWith whisperings of more transcendent goals.\nO despicable, admirable man!\nHow much I envy you--the devil take you!\n\n    [_The bust of Washington and its pedestal move\n    slightly; gradually they change and shape\n    themselves into the figure of a well-dressed man,\n    rather short and stocky, with a sociable,\n    commonplace face. His head, however, is very\n    peculiarly modelled; it reminds one, indescribably\n    and faintly, of the fact that men sprang from\n    beasts. The high position of the ears help this\n    impression, as does also the astonishing animal\n    brilliance of the eyes. Faust, passing his hand\n    over his forehead, turns away._\n\nFAUST\n\nThis is what comes of smoking far too much.\n\nSATAN\n\nGood evening, Mr. Faust.\n\nFAUST\n\n                         Well, I'll be damned!...\nAnd who, I beg, are you?\n\nSATAN\n\n                          I ask your pardon\nFor thus appearing in a way unknown\nTo strict convention. But I never set\nGreat store by custom; and though nowadays\nI follow the proprieties, still I feel\nThat one need not be slavish--\n\nFAUST\n\n                               Who are you?\nWhat are you talking of? How did you get here?\n\nSATAN\n\nI am, sir, Nicholas Satan, at your service.\n\nFAUST\n\nNicholas Satan! Quite a name. Perhaps\nSome relative of the illustrious one?\n\nSATAN\n\nHimself.\n\nFAUST\n          Stop this cheap foolishness! Who are you?\nOr shall I ring for the police?\n\nSATAN\n\n                                I am\nSatan. If I appeared with colored fire\nAnd lightnings round me, you would doubt no more.\nBut like your narrow and near-sighted age,\nYou know me not in my own natural shape.\nNow let this end! Here is my proof. You once\nSummoned me to your aid, and, when I came,\nWeakly rejected me. You were a boy\nIn college, and a woman blackmailed you--\nA low, crude matter. I had settled it\nSwiftly, if you had let me. We alone,\nWe three, on Harvard Bridge--night--and beneath,\nA practicable river: ah, it was\nA child's task! But you faltered.... You recall,\nPossibly.\n\nFAUST\n\n              I recall.... So you are he.\nI did not know you.\n\nSATAN\n\n                    Let's forget the past.\nWe meet now under happier auspices.\n\nFAUST\n\nIncredible.\n\nSATAN\n\n            No, quite an honest fact\nAm I.\n\nFAUST\n\n       I hardly can persuade myself\nWhether to laugh or pull a solemn face\nAt seeing you. It is preposterous!\nI thought that you were dead--a myth--a wraith.\n\nSATAN\n\nDead? That is rich!\n\nFAUST\n\n                Well ... don't you think yourself\nA slight anachronism?\n\nSATAN\n\n                      My young friend,\nI am no laughing matter. With the times\nI, too, have changed, and am as up-to-date\nAs the Ritz-Carlton.\n\nFAUST\n\n                     But your horns and tail\nAnd pitchfork? Not a vestige do I see\nOf your famed look! You have no frightful glance;\nI cannot even so far flatter you\nAs to say special badness makes your face\nGreat and distinguished. If you're Prince of Hell,\nHow villanously have the poets lied!\n\nSATAN\n\nThey have lied, always, horribly, of me!\nI am not half so black as they allege.\nYou know, exaggeration is to them\nWhat whiskey is to most men. But time bursts\nTheir bubbles--or at least we come to take\nTheir work as merely art. Thus their description\nAs art is not so bad; but if you seek\nFor truth, it's outright libel.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                I admit\nIt has a certain perfectness of evil\nLacking in you.\n\nSATAN\n\n                Surely to-day we know\nThat nothing is so wholly good or bad\nAs our forefathers thought: not black and white,\nBut gray, predominates. Well, I am gray,\nPossibly. I was never black; and age\nHas made me stouter, and with gentle warmth\nRipened my virtues; and, even though I say it,\nYou will not find me a bad sort to meet\nIf you will but be fair, and put aside\nYour ancient and poetic prejudice.\n\nFAUST\n\nWell spoken! And well met! Come, have a drink.\nYou are the most diverting visitor\nI've had in many a day. Bourbon or Scotch?\n\nSATAN\n\nA very little Scotch. That's plenty, thanks.\nIt's very seldom those who summon me\nWould give, not take. And did you send for me\nOnly to have a drink?\n\nFAUST\n\n                      I sent for you?\n\nSATAN\n\nDid you not summon me?\n\nFAUST\n\n                       Why, no--\n\nSATAN\n\n                                 Ah, well!\nIt's my mistake; wires get crossed sometimes.\nI hope I've not intruded.\n\nFAUST\n\n                          Not at all.\nDelighted to have met you.\n\nSATAN\n\n                           I regret\nThat I have bothered you. I have enjoyed,\nHowever, your kind hospitality.\nTo make amends to you, before I go,\nI should be glad to do you any service\nWithin my power.\n\nFAUST\n\n                 I thank you; but I think\nThat there is nothing in your special line\nThat I have need of.\n\nSATAN\n\n                     Are you really, then,\nA man contented?\n\nFAUST\n\n                 I would hardly go\nAs far as that!... I only meant to say\nMy needs, my troubles, are not of such kind\nAs you could remedy.\n\nSATAN\n\n                     Now, there again\nYou take the poets' word for me--those low\nAnd scurvy fellows who lump all their spleen\nAnd call the mess my portrait! But in fact,\nI am more versatile, more broad, more kind\nThan they conceive. I venture to believe\nThat I could aid you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                      All the fiends in Hell\nLack devilry enough.\n\nSATAN\n\n                     If you would speak\nThe symptoms of your trouble, I at least\nCould give you friendly counsel for your needs....\nOh, I am deeply learned!\n\nFAUST\n\n                         And besides,\nA most accomplished mocker!... My complaint\nIs quite beyond your counsel. Why, I tell you,\nI have examined, tried, experienced\nThe passions and the aims of mortal life\nWith the grave thoroughness and good intent\nThat mark a doctor of philosophy\nWriting his thesis. And my careful search\nOf life has brought me one great verity:\n_I do not like it!_ No, I do not like\nAnything in it: birth, death, all that lies\nBetween--I find inadequate, incomplete,\nOffensive. So you see me sitting here,\nInstead of talking politics in the streets,\nOr weeping at the opera, or agog\nAt a cotillon. For the savor's gone\nFrom these, as parts of an unsavored whole.\nI simply have, with reason and sound thought,\nConvinced myself that only fools attain\nTheir hope on earth--in a fools' paradise\nThat does not interest me.... Now, could you treat\nThis case, good Mr. Satan?\n\nSATAN\n\n                           In my day,\nI have relieved far sicker men than you,\nMy dear friend Faust. And yet I would not say\nEven for a moment that your case is not\nA grave one: not so much the case itself,\nAs what might spring from it. In such a mood,\nMen sometimes have done mad and foolish things\nWith consequences sad to view. Some minds,\nReaching your state, and finding life a bane,\nDecide within themselves that naught can be\nWorse than the present world, and then set out\nTo revolutionize, rend, whirl, uproot\nThe world's foundations. And the mess they make\nIs pitiful to contemplate! Such sweet\nAnd beautiful souls as I have seen go wrong\nAlong this path: Shelley--he had your eyes;\nAnd Christ--but I'll not talk theology.\nBesides, his churches almost have made good\nHis personal havoc....\n\nFAUST\n\n                      That is not my line.\n\nSATAN\n\nNo, no, you keep your head! Now let me see....\nA temporary sedative you require\nTo bridge the dangerous moment. I suggest\nA little course that old Saint Anthony,\nEpicure though he was, would grant as rare\nAnd finely chosen: careless days and nights--\nDelicious gayeties--the Bacchic bowl--\nExquisite company from whom some two\nOr three, with golden or with auburn hair,\nA man of taste might choose to solace him\nIn sunlight or in starlight--while the lure\nOf subtle secrets in those yielding breasts\nSpice the preceding revelries....\n\nFAUST\n\n                                  Go tell\nThat tale to college boys, whose lonely dreams\nHave shaped Iseult of Ireland, Helen of Troy,\nAs end of heart's desire--and, lacking these,\nClasp chorus-Aphrodites. But I know\nThat from the topmost peak of ecstasy\nFalls a straight precipice; half-times the foot\nMisses the peak--but never mortal step\nHas missed the gulf beyond it. And I see\nWhere, in night's gorgeous dome, to-morrow waits\nWith cold insistence. Me you cannot lure\nWith this poor opiate. And I beg of you\nNot needlessly to tax your mental powers\nBy now suggesting the delights of drink:\nI know them; and they give me headaches.\n\nSATAN\n\n                                          Ah,\nHow crude you think me!\n\nFAUST\n\n                        No, I think you human.\nWe all are that sometimes.\n\nSATAN\n\n                                You have not grasped\nAll that I meant. I know the calfish joys\nOf the young freshman, suddenly let loose\nWith chorus-girls for nursemaids, are not yours.\nI mean far subtler things: I mean the play\nOf the wise soul that sees the abyss of life--\nSees the grim measure of the mortal doom--\nAnd over that dark gulf in reckless mirth\nDances on rainbows, with delightful arms\nAnd bosoms close to his. That is a mood\nThat always thrills me with a sense of large\nAnd splendid courage. If I did not think\nThat it would bore you, I should like to make\nMy meaning clear by reading a few lines\nThat I once wrote when I myself was in\nYour very mood-- Or would you care to hear\nMy little poem?\n\nFAUST\n\n                What! Is even the Devil\nA poet nowadays?\n\nSATAN\n\n                 Indeed he is:\nAnd not a bad one. Once I would have scorned\nThe poets; but we moderns so surpass\nThe ancients here that I am proud to write\nSome verses now and then. For we have learned\nThat poetry, like all the other arts,\nIs pure technique: the mere ideas are nothing,\nThe form is everything. That ennobles us\nAnd makes us artists. And as artist, I\nAm not contemptible, as you may see\nFrom this slight sample. With your leave, I'll read.\n\n    (_Satan produces an enormous scrap-book of\n    magazine-clippings, turns over the pages and at\n    last begins to read_)\n\n                           A WATTEAU MELODY\n\n        Oh, let me take your lily hand,\n    And where the secret star-beams shine\n    Draw near, to see and understand\n    Pierrot and Columbine.\n\n        Around the fountains, in the dew,\n    Where afternoon melts into night,\n    With gracious mirth their gracious crew\n    Entice the shy birds of delight.\n\n        Of motley dress and masked face,\n    Of sparkling unrevealing eyes,\n    They track in gentle aimless chase\n    The moment as it flies.\n\n        Their delicate beribboned rout,\n    Gallant and fair, of light intent,\n    Weaves through the shadows in and out\n    With infinite artful merriment.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n        Dear lady of the lily hand--\n    Do then our stars so clearly shine\n    That we, who do not understand,\n    May mock Pierrot and Columbine?\n\n        Beyond this garden-grove I see\n    The wise, the noble, and the brave\n    In ultimate futility\n    Go down into the grave.\n\n        And all they dreamed and all they sought,\n    Crumbled and ashen grown, departs;\n    And is as if they had not wrought\n    These works with blood from out their hearts.\n\n        The nations fall, the faiths decay,\n    The great philosophies go by--\n    And life lies bare, some bitter day,\n    A charnel that affronts the sky.\n\n        The wise, the noble, and the brave--\n    They saw and solved--as we must see\n    And solve--the universal grave,\n    The ultimate futility.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n        Look--where beside the garden-pool\n    A Venus rises in the grove,\n    More suave, more debonair, more cool\n    Than ever burned with Paphian love.\n\n        'Twas here the delicate ribboned rout\n    Of gallants and the fair ones went\n    Among the shadows in and out\n    With infinite artful merriment.\n\n        Then let me take your lily hand,\n    And let us tread, where star-beams shine,\n    A dance; and be, and understand\n    Pierrot and Columbine.\n\nFAUST\n\nSplendid! Delightful!\n\nSATAN\n\n                      You are flattering me.\nHow did you like it, really?\n\nFAUST\n\n                             Well, as art\nI think it splendid; as philosophy,\nI hardly praise it. 'Tis a mood that comes\nAnd has its will of us in its own hours--\nYes, irresistibly. But past the hour\nWait graver judges. I decline to be,\nAs you suggest delightfully, a fly\nOn the spoiled beer of life. Nor do I lean\nToward your ingenious blending of despair,\nSatiety, and child's-play.\n\nSATAN\n\n                           Those who take\nThis attitude, however, swiftly grow\nThe darlings of existence--souls that sip\nOf every flower the nectar, and are bound\nUnto no laws or standards, but move free,\nViewing all things as relative.... And yet\nYour special temperament may not prefer\nNectar. Those lines of sternness round your mouth\nConvince me you are right; another cure\nBetter befits you. And a mighty one\nI set before you, which has ever served\nAs lodestar for all high and glorious minds,\nAll kings of earth, all potentates of thought,\nAll great achievers. Power I offer you--\nThe one chief prize that all men have desired\nAnd shall desire forever.\n\nFAUST\n\n                          Now you grow\nRather more interesting. What do you mean?\nA crown and sceptre and a thousand slaves\nTo serve me?\n\nSATAN\n\n                  Do not jest. I offer you\nThe one sole reservoir where power to-day\nLies stored in sleeping cataracts. At noon\nCome with me into Wall Street; take your stand;\nBuy, sell, as I direct you; and one hour\nShall make you richer than you ever dreamed\nIn madness of desire. For three days more\nCome there each noon again; at end of these,\nIf you have done my bidding, you shall be\nMaster of the finances of the world,\nDespot of nations, unto whom the kings\nAnd captains of the earth shall kneel to crave\nCrumbs from the table. Then let pen and sword\nForget their quarrel for supremacy;\nSince you can buy them both, or starve them both,\nOr cast them to the wilderness! Such power\nI offer as would make the pulses beat\nEven of a skeleton!\n\nFAUST\n\n                    But not a soul\nGrown sceptical of life. Power? Power? For what?\nAnd over what? And toward what? Not a power\nOver myself or pain or loneliness\nOr ignorance or evil; not a strength\nTo bid the near-world cease, and in its place\nInstate my visions beautiful and pale,\nNearer the heart's desire. No, you would give\nPower to direct the miseries of men,\nBut not to stay them: power to hold the world\nAs some cold robber-baron from his rocks\nOnce held his little valley: power to sit\nIn ultimate seclusion, and look down\nOn streets and mines and workshops with the sense\nThat I was fountain of the miseries\nDark in them all. I thank you; but I think\nI should derive small sport from such a game.\nYou see, I am not Satan.\n\nSATAN\n\n                         Well, you are\nA subtle one, a shrewd one! On my word,\nI hardly had suspected you so deep.\nWhat time I have been wasting! Mr. Faust,\nAt last I know you for a prince of men--\nA brilliant mind, a high intelligence,\nA spirit incorruptible. The trash,\nBaubles and claptrap which the foolish herd\nSnatch at, you scoff--and rightly. I will not\nWith one more word of it insult your mind\nThat admirably penetrates to deeps\nWhere I, too, love to dwell. I put aside\nAll trivialities, and frankly say\nThat I can offer you one ultimate gift\nFit even for you--a subtle paradise\nSuch as not Hercules mid Western Isles\nFound in the Garden of Hesperides.\nIt is a paradise of secret peace,\nA glorious land of amaranthine bloom;\nWhere happiness, having fled the world, now dwells\nIn shining gladness. Guarded, deep, sublime\nWith lights and shadows, lies it: there have hearts\nThe weariest and the greatest of mankind\nFound perfect refuge and abiding-place\nFor time and for eternity. To few\nIts gates are open: it I promise you\nIf you but trust me!\n\nFAUST\n\n                        But why should I trust you?\nIf history speaks true, you have deceived\nAll who, since Eve, have put their faith in you.\nFurther, your paradise could hardly have\nJoys in it worth the grasping, to my taste.\nSo pardon me if frankly I admit\nI doubt your promise.\n\nSATAN\n\n                      Ah, you are wholly wrong!\nI am quite honest with you, now having learned\nYour true capacity.\n\nFAUST\n\n                    Perhaps, perhaps.\nAnd yet I must decline.\n\nSATAN\n\n                        You doubt me still.\nBut I will prove my utter honesty\nBeyond contention. In my deepest soul,\nI know this paradise will serve your need;\nAnd to make plain to you my fair intent,\nI offer you a bargain whose clear terms\nMust drive your doubts away. I am prepared\nTo pledge myself to be your abject slave\nAnd servant for all time if you yourself\nDo not acknowledge that my paradise\nDelights you wholly!\n\nFAUST\n\n                     Well! That _is_ an offer!\n\nSATAN\n\nWhat could be fairer? You yourself shall judge;\nAnd you risk nothing. Ah, your look still doubts!\nYou have in mind those libellous poets' tales\nOf bonds inscribed in blood which I exact\nIn payment, and destroy men's souls! My friend,\nHave I yet asked you for a bond of blood?\nAnd if I ever do, I give you leave\nTo wring my neck unceremoniously.\n\nFAUST\n\nWell, for the life of me, I cannot read you!\nYet let me ask: why such an eager will\nTo serve a man into whose rooms you came\nBy chance to-night? Why give yourself such pains\nTo furnish him a paradise?\n\nSATAN\n\n                           There is\nNo mystery in that. I would ally\nYou to myself.\n\nFAUST\n\n               Thanks, I decline.\n\nSATAN\n\n                                  You fail\nTo understand me. For I ask not this\nAs promise of you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                   What, then, do you mean?\nWhat do you count on? Whence do you expect\nPay for your trouble and your risk--a risk\nNot trivial, I warn you?\n\nSATAN\n\n                         Let me make\nThe matter clear to you. I know quite well\nThe risk is nothing, since my paradise\nWill utterly delight you. Granting this,\nYou see my profit: you will stay with me\nWillingly there forever, to my ends\nAn interested assistant. I will serve\nForth on my tables such delicious fare\nThat you will freely choose to be my guest\nThrough time and through eternity. I say:\nFie for a bond written in scrawly blood!\nA bond of choice is better. Could a saint\nSpeak fairer to you? I risk everything,\nAnd you risk nothing but a little time;\nAnd time, as you are placed, seems not so dear\nThat you need hoard it.\n\nFAUST\n\n                        But your ends are--what?\n\nSATAN\n\nHow can it matter now--if seeing them\nYou shall approve them?\n\nFAUST\n\n                        Are you serious?\n\nSATAN\n\nMy jests have other aspect.\n\nFAUST\n\n                            I accept.\nYour game is to my taste. For thirty years\nHave I made search through all the lands of earth,\nThe realms of learning, and the tangled groves\nOf fancy, for some region which my soul\nMight with entire approval view; but none\nHas been vouchsafed me. If the Devil can\nIn this surpass the world's established powers,\nThen I am his disciple willingly....\nBut if you fail, friend Satan!--I shall tie\nYou to a cart's tail and exhibit you\nLike a dead whale throughout the country--or\nMake you curator of an orphanage!\n\nSATAN\n\nI shall not fail.\n\nOLDHAM (_enters_)\n\n                  I beg your pardon, Faust;\nI thought you'd be alone. My brother left,\nNot waiting for me; and, as I passed by,\nI saw your lights, and thought I would look in\nJust for a moment. I had things to say\nThat are perhaps much better left unsaid.\nGood-bye, my dear friend. I will not disturb you.\nGood night again.\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Wait, Oldham; do not go.\nI have a visitor whose name you know,\nBut not, perhaps, his person. Let me have\nThe pleasure of presenting you. This is\nThe Devil--Mr. Oldham.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                       You are mad!\nWhat jest is this?\n\nSATAN\n\n                   I am indeed the Devil.\nLook in my eyes intently.... Shall I tell you\nYour thought, two minutes since?... Or what you hold\nClutched now against your side?... _Or where you go\nWhen you go hence to-night?_...\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                              No!... I believe you....\nAlthough it is incredible!...\n\nFAUST\n\n                                 You come\nJust at the proper moment for good-bye,\nFor I am going with him on a journey,\nAnd do not know how soon I shall return.\nIf I return at all.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                    A journey? Where?\n\nSATAN\n\nTo paradise.\n\nFAUST\n\n             He offers paradise\nThat will suffice my wish, and gives himself\nAs pledge of his success.\n\nSATAN\n\n                          Come, we must haste,\nFor it is very far.\n\nFAUST\n\n                    To paradise!...\n\nOLDHAM\n\nTo paradise.... Take me with you!\n\nFAUST\n\n                                  My friend,\nIt is not possible. I do foresee\nSome perils to whose touch I would subject\nNone save myself.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                  And what care I for them!\nFaust--on my word, when I climbed up your stair\nThis second time, it was to say good-bye\nTo you forever, being quite resolved\nTo end my choking loneliness and loathing\nWith a quick shot to-night. Take me, or I\nShall carry out my purpose. What care I\nWhither you go, or what the perils be?\nI would go with you into Hell!\n\nSATAN\n\n                               We go\nTo paradise. What is this Hell you name?\n\n                                CURTAIN\n\n\n\n\n                            THE SECOND ACT\n\n\n_The scene is the stone-paved courtyard of a ruined temple. In the\ncentre lies a square pool, with wide rows of steps leading down to the\nwater, now overgrown with lotus plants. Around the court rise long\ncolonnades of pillars with grotesquely carven bases and capitals of\nluxuriant design. Beyond these appear green masses of dense tropical\nfoliage, in which an occasional brilliant flower shines._\n\n_Faust, Satan and Oldham, all wearing white tropical dress and\nsun-helmets, are seated on fragments of fallen columns in front of the\npool. Luncheon is spread before them. Oldham is lighting a cigarette;\nFaust is just finishing his meal; Satan is leaning back, contemplating\nthe surrounding jungle. Two dark-skinned servants, wearing white robes\nand turbans, are beginning to bear away the repast._\n\nOLDHAM\n\nOne's blood beats fuller in these tropic lands.\nLast night, as we were dining, where the beach\nWith its plumed palm-trees sloped to meet the sea,\nAnd the white foam along the glassy waves\nPlayed in the evening light--I half believe\nI could have written love-songs. But to whom--\nThat were a problem!\n\nFAUST\n\n                     Yes, one's brain is lit\nWith fire beneath this sun. At night, the glow\nIs magical; but at this height of day,\nWhen all the branches and the flowers and rocks\nAnd the far glimmering rivers shake and writhe\nIn the fierce blaze, I feel a hideous touch\nOf madness in it.\n\nSATAN\n\n                  Keep you to the shade!\nThis is the pinnacle, the very noon\nOf summer in these lands. One hour of sun\nUnshaded--and poor Oldham and poor I\nMight have a maniac or a corpse as guest.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nI am not sure that I would help you with him.\nI might be elsewhere occupied. Last night\nI entertained myself with imaging\nA project which, if I adopted it,\nWould preengage me.\n\nSATAN\n\n                    With a single guess,\nI'll tell you what it was.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                           I give you twenty.\n\nSATAN\n\nYou thought perhaps it would be nice to be\nThe white bull we saw yesterday, and eat\nWithout reproof from every vender's stall\nThroughout the whole bazar; and you intend\nThus to disguise yourself, and try the sport.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nYou hit it nearer than I thought you would!\n'Twas something like that. I was wondering\nIf, in this marvellous and lazy clime,\nIt were not possible for one to take\nTwenty young beauties and a hundred slaves--\nRetire to some secluded isle of palms--\nAnd live without a thought, a wish, a hope,\nDrugged with the warmth, the languor and the light.\n\nFAUST\n\nPossible?--For a rabbit! Not for you.\n\nSATAN\n\nI am afraid you'd find it wearisome.\nSome like it; but not your kind.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                 In this heat\nEven he grows crazy; and we, Satan, turn\nUnsympathetic creatures. Whew, this blaze\nIs getting worse! Can't we move on?\n\nSATAN\n\n                                    We go\nNo farther.\n\nFAUST\n\n            Lovely residence!\n\nSATAN\n\n                              It is here\nThat our long journey terminates, my friends.\nUpon this spot I trust, if all goes well,\nTo give your long tried patience recompense.\n\nFAUST\n\nRecompense? I am sceptical of it!\nBut we deserve this. None but idiots\nWould have come with you to this boiling land\nOn a wild-goose chase; on each step of which\nOne gets a fleeting panoramic view\nOf kinds of misery one did not guess\nExisted in the world. Those lepers, beggars,\nCripples, fanatics, reptiles--all the swarms\nOf loathsome creatures we have passed--will haunt\nMy dreams forever with new vivid masks\nOf nightmare. Recompense? There isn't any!\n\nSATAN\n\nAwait the event. You shall have recompense.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nSatan, what is your meaning? What event\nDo you await here? You have been to us,\nThrough our long journey, secretive and close\nOf all your purposes--from day to day\nGiving no hint of your to-morrow's plan\nNor of our destination. Now, I think,\nSilence is not a virtue. Have we come\nIn fact to our last halt?\n\nSATAN\n\n                          This is the spot\nToward which our course unswervingly has aimed\nSince the first day. This vast and ruined shrine,\nBuilt in forgotten times to unknown gods,\nAnd now in timeless solitude enfolded,\nHas long been known to me. Here, in retreat\nFrom the world's noises, dwells a holy man,\nA wonder-worker of unfathomed power,\nNow long forgotten by the troubled world\nExcept me only. 'Tis his aged hand\nShall open to you those celestial gates\nWe come to enter.\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Ah, a wonder-worker!\nPerhaps he will perform the mango trick,\nOr the rope-climbing, or the boy-in-the-basket?\nThe jugglers here have been below report\nOne hears of them.\n\nSATAN\n\n                     Put by your idle sneers.\nHe is a prophet and a saint whose like\nThe world can offer not. Upon his face\nYou shall behold such utter holiness,\nSuch sublimate devotion as shall shake\nYour hearts' foundations.\n\nFAUST\n\n                          Well, I can endure\nThe meeting if he can.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                       Satan, you choose\nSometimes strange company. You often speak\nOf friendship with such men of holiness\nAs much surprises me.\n\nSATAN\n\n                      If you were but\nA little wiser, you would understand\nThat I have taught them much, at various times,\nThat is of profit to them.\n\nFAUST\n\n                           Pray teach me\nA little something also.\n\nSATAN\n\n                         No, you think\nYou know too much already.... Furthermore,\nYou do not trust me; and I will not teach\nOne who keeps restlessly, the whole day long,\nHis eyes upon me, as though fearful I\nWere waiting to spring on him unawares!\n\nFAUST\n\nOh, you exaggerate.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                    Look through yonder palms!\nSomeone is coming.\n\nSATAN\n                   He sees us! It is he!\n\n    [_Through the colonnade along the far side of the\n    courtyard, there enters the Holy One, an aged man\n    of venerable and sublime appearance, clad in a\n    simple white robe. In his hand is a large copper\n    bowl, which he carries with some care._\n\nSATAN\n\nHe brings a bowl of water from the spring--\nThe very bowl I gave him!\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                          What a face!\nWhat light, what soundless calm!\n\nFAUST\n\n                                 He is, indeed,\nOne of the ancient prophets....\n\nSATAN\n\n                                Holy One!\nSatan salutes you!\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                   Satan--come again\nAfter so long? A little longer--then\nNo carcass of illusion here shall wait\nTo greet you.\n\nSATAN\n\n              In the greatness of the sea\nAll waves find home....\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                         Yea, verily; and the deep\nLies not far off. I am drawn nearer it\nSince last you came: I see its floods more clear,\nIt laves me daily.... But what brings you back\nTo my deserted dwelling from the press\nWhere you are ever going to and fro\nUpon the earth?\n\nSATAN\n\n                I came to seek for you,\nWhose feet are on the path of blessedness.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\nAh, has illusion rent itself in twain\nFor your sight also?\n\nSATAN\n\n                     Ask me not. I come\nNot on my mission, but on theirs....\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                                     On theirs!\nAnd who are your companions?\n\nSATAN\n\n                             Friends, who seek\nWhat you have found.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                     They have not in their eyes\nWholly the look of Seekers. Passion lurks\nAlong their ruddy lips.... And yet, who knows?\n\nFAUST\n\nI offer you our greetings, reverend sir.\nA long way have we come to meet with you,\nBy Satan led.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n              And what would you with me?\n\nFAUST\n\nParadise! Paradise!\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                        Too hotly spoken!\nGo, get you to the dancers of Tanjore....\nParadise!\n\nOLDHAM\n\n          You belie us, Faust. Let me\nHave speech with him.\n\n                      Most Holy One, we come,\nFrom lands far off, beyond remotest seas\nOf sunset. There, in midst of toil and stress\nAnd clamor, have we dwelt, till weariness\nOf all life's gifts impelled us to go forth\nTo seek if anywhere a region lay\nWhere happiness still dwelt. To you we turn\nAs unto one upon whose face is set\nThe seal of peace such as we dreamed not of.\n\nSATAN\n\nThey seek the Way, the Way, most Holy One.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\nThe Blessed Eightfold Way lies free to all.\nI cannot ope it to them. Peace, joy, bliss,\nSupernal glory is it to those souls\nWho have put by the follies of their birth\nAnd sought its refuge. But though now I stand\nWith lighted heart upon its blissful path,\nI can stretch out no hand to grasp their hands\nAnd draw them toward it.\n\nSATAN\n\n                         Yet the Blessed One,\nIn Gaya first enlightened, far and wide\nTaught men the Way....\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                       Aye, verily.... Some mood\nOf evil in my heart has closed my mouth\nAnd darkened thus my eyesight. But 'tis gone....\nBrethren, have comfort on my frugal stones.\nAsk me all ye desire.\n\nSATAN\n\n                      Most Holy One,\nThese are my friends; I bring them in sore need\nUnto your wisdom. For methinks they stand\nNow at the cross-roads where the choice is made\nOf truth or vanity. I beg you, tell\nUnto their ears how, in your day, you came\nTo that dark crossing.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                       I would do your will\nIn this, and in all other services,\nMy brethren.\n\n             You must know that in my youth\nI was a lusty noble of the realm\nOf Jeypore; and the falcon and the sword\nAnd the nautch-dancers and the palace-girls\nWere mine to love and master like a lord.\nLordlike I lived; the caskets of the day\nAnd of the night I crowded with bright jewels\nOf love and joy and laughter. No desire\nPanted unslaked an instant at my doors--\nNay, feasts were spread for it. And poor men gazed\nOn me with envy, muttering from their dust:\n\"Behold, the Heavens' darling.\"...\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                                   Other lands\nKnow the same tale.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                        Aye, aye, all lands. And then\nOne night, alone in mine own garden walls,\nBeneath the piercing stars, I gathered my life\nInto my hands, and looked at it, and far\nBeyond it at all other mortal lives;\nAnd dust fell from mine eyelids....\n\n                                   For I saw\nBirth and desire, satiety and pain,\nRecurrent yearning that is never stilled,\nAgony, death, rebirth in other forms,\nAnd agony, and desire, and agony.\nBut nowhere saw I happiness or peace\nOr rest from cravings that like vultures tear\nThe fibres of the heart.\n\n                         Then wandered I\nForth from my palaces in utter pain,\nSeeing the world as dust and vanity,\nA desert of despair, a raging sea\nOf torment....\n\nSATAN\n\n              Now why stops the Holy One?\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\nIt wearies me to speak, and to recall\nThose perished years.... Give me to drink.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                                      He speaks\nOut of familiar deeps. Seas sunder us,\nBut the same stars have cast their ghostly rays\nInto our bosoms.\n\nFAUST\n\n                   And those cloudless eyes\nHave seen what we have seen!\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                             I am refreshed....\nThus long ago, in my most desolate hour,\nI was refreshed by draughts from the deep springs\nOf light. Beneath a pipal tree I sat\nIn lost despair; and thither to me came\nA pilgrim; and he glanced into mine eyes\nWith sight that read the sickness of my soul,\nAnd sat beside me, and in measured words\nLike far-off song told me this parable:\n\n    The Buddha came to where the sea\nCurled silver-white upon the land,\nAnd murmurs of infinity\nBreathed on the sand.\n\n    And there lay shells like rosy foam\nBorne from the caverns of the deep,\nFrail playthings drifted from the home\nOf timeless, tideless sleep.\n\n    And on the sand a Fisher stood,\nDrying his nets that late had seen\nThe silent caverns of the flood\nAnd all the wastes between.\n\n    The Fisher lingered in his place\nWith countenance of mild surprise,\nAnd looked upon the Buddha's face\nWith dumb, uncomprehending eyes.\n\n    And Buddha spake: \"Thy nets are drawn,\nThy boat rocks idle on the sea,\nThy day turns westward, and is gone....\nCome thou with me.\"\n\n    The Fisher marvelled: \"I must toil\nWith nets and shells among the caves,\nTo win the sea's unwilling spoil\nFrom the harsh waves.\"\n\n    And Buddha answered: \"Cast no more\nThy nets upon the troubled sea,\nNor gather shells along the shore.\nCome thou with me.\n\n    \"Thou drawest shells and curious flowers\nFrom out the blue untrodden caves.\nThou seest the passing of the hours.\nThou hearest the clamor of the waves.\n\n    \"Thou openest the shell where lies\nThe pearl more white than driven spray--\nAnd trackless past thy vision flies\nEach passing day.\n\n    \"But I will teach thee not to stir\nThe shell nor flower in its sleep.\nFor thou shalt roam the sepulchre\nThat chasms all their native deep.\n\n    \"And vain desire, like terror grown\nDeep in the chambers of thy breast,\nShall be from thee forever flown,\nAnd thou shalt rest.\n\n    \"No search for pearls shall blind thy thought,\nNor waves, with clamorous harmonies.\nBut in the silence where is naught\nThou shalt behold the One that is.\n\n    \"And where the days now speed like foam\nAcross thy vision, there shall be\nFor thee a vast eternal home--\nAn Infinite Sea.\"\n\n    The Fisher looked on Buddha dumb--\nLooked deep into that tender gaze--\nThose eyes within whose depths had come\nAnd gone the sorrows of all days.\n\n    He looked uncomprehendingly,\nAnd wearily he shook his head;\nAnd turned once more to drag the sea,\nKnowing not what the Buddha said.\n\nFAUST\n\nThe cup again! The Holy One is faint.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nHe speaks a miracle!...\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                        And then I knew\nThat pilgrim as a saint, whose lips revealed\nThe glory of the Buddha. I beheld\nMy life one poisoned network of desire\nAnd fleshly longing and pain-sowing hope--\nThe evil self seeking its happiness\nAnd shaping horror. And I cast away\nMyself, and cried: What am I but a dream,\nA wave within the sea, a passing cloud\nUpon the radiance of eternity?\nAll yearning will I slay, and slay therewith\nThe sorrow that succeeds it!...\n\n                                So the lust\nOf life passed from me; so the narrow I\nMerged in the infinite, from hope set free--\nHeritor of Nirvana's holy calm,\nWherein the voices of the heart's unrest\nAre stifled, and the soul expands to clasp\nJoy, nothingness, eternity and peace.\n\nFAUST\n\nPeace.... Peace.... Like bells from upland monasteries\nYou speak the word that summons us. But where\nIn peace is room for all once-towering hopes--\nNay, even for the wrecked and prostrate monoliths\nThat mark those fallen pylons?\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                               Let the earth,\nRavenous of her young, these too devour,\nAnd dust and nothingness engulf their shapes--\nVain burdens, bitter monuments.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                And where\nShall I find deeps wherein without a sound\nI can extinguish my wild will that leaps\nFlamelike to meet the stars?\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                             In that deep sea\nHid in thy breast. Seek thou that tide of calm,\nFor it lies there awaiting.\n\nFAUST\n\n                             Can it be\nThat life's whole burden may be cast aside\nAnd named as nothing, and its memory\nPerish forever? In the summer nights,\nComes there no stealing ecstasy to stir\nThe old forgotten longings?\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                            In the night\nAnd in the day, one ecstasy abides\nCeaselessly with the heart that has put off\nDesire--one ecstasy of final calm.\nAll other voices seem harsh clamorings.\n\nOLDHAM\n\nAh, Holy One, lead me thy way of peace!\nFor I am weary of my heart's vain wars.\nMy life is as a desert, where desire\nCorrodes me ceaselessly. Instruct my soul\nTo follow thee home to the gulfs of rest!\nThat, in renouncement of this bitter will,\nIt find at last deliverance it has sought.\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\nMy son, thou hast spoken; thou shalt come in time\nTo that abode. The Buddha's light shall guide\nBoth thee and me, poor seekers. Bide with me;\nAnd what I know, that shalt thou freely know,\nAnd my peace shall be thy peace....\n\nSATAN\n\n                                   Faust, the gates\nAdmit one form already.\n\nFAUST\n\n                        Ah, the gates\nAre pearl and silver.... Would that there were space\nWithin them for such fevered heart as mine--\nThat with the restlessness of stormy winds\nBeats on its barriers!\n\nTHE HOLY ONE\n\n                       There is room for all\nWhose souls renounce the world and life and hope\nTo gain that soundless silence.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                                Faust, I feel,\nTransfused with light and glory, that deep peace\nAwaiting. There shall perish like a flame\nThe passions which have seared my tortured soul\nAll my life long. They die; and nothingness\nLike a cool flood sweeps over me. Ah, come\nWhere never storm shall smite!\n\nFAUST\n\n                               I see the gates;\nI see the cool breast of the silvery flood\nOf refuge and oblivion.... Fare you well,\nOldham, and light go with you! For I go,\nAlas, not with you....\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                      Faust, Faust, turn not back!\nI, who am casting all desires in dust,\nTo one desire still cling: I long that joy\nOf such deliverance fill you as fills me\nOn this first step of the sublime ascent.\n\nFAUST\n\nI see the light that waits you on the peak;\nAnd my heart follows you. But my stern soul\nPlucks me yet back with cold insistency\nI cannot master.... Go! If I could pray,\nMy prayers should follow you. My visions shall;\nMy love shall fold you. But I cannot come\nWhere you shall go; I cannot cast aside\nAll that I surely know--this pitiful\nAnd shattered mortal life, with its strange gleams\nAnd shadows--and embrace the icy void\nWhere Being trembles on the final verge.\nTo bid life cease--but linger as the moon\nLingers in heaven--ah, that is horrible\nBeyond life's proper horrors!... Were my pain\nA single atom greater--were my soul\nA single breath more weary--I would come.\nBut now I must confront the winds of heaven\nStill master of my destinies.... To the last,\nNot in such tomb-world can my spirit rest.\nNo golden clouds that throng Nirvana's gates\nShall tempt me there to enter and resign\nMy right to strain beyond all gates that be....\nBut you I cannot counsel....\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                             Me the peace\nAlready laps with wavelets of the flood.\n\nFAUST\n\nThe flood is sundering us.\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                           Farewell, farewell,\nBeloved friend. I with the Holy One\nHenceforth am linked; and grief shall follow me\nIn what should be your footsteps.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                  Have no grief.\nIn the vast deeps of life's salt bitter sea\nPerhaps awaits my anodyne, to heal\nLife's wounds....\n\nOLDHAM\n\n                     Farewell! I go to paradise.\n\n    [_Oldham and the Holy One move slowly away\n    together, pass through the colonnades, and\n    disappear into the forest. Faust follows with his\n    eyes their retreating figures._\n\nSATAN\n\nYou do not know a paradise when you see it!\nSome day, when I have time, I'll start a school\nTo give instruction to great minds like you--\nDebutant!\n\nFAUST\n\n          Ah, I had forgotten you....\nTwo men are worth a thousand devils still.\n\nSATAN\n\nI overrated you. Now get you gone\nBefore I call the savagery that sleeps\nHere in the jungle to annihilate you\nFor your unparalleled stupidity.\n\nFAUST\n\nStupidity or no, I have one word\nStill to say to you, my malicious friend:\nTo heel!\n\nSATAN\n\n         What!\n\nFAUST\n\n               Aye, to heel, I say! Crouch down\nAnd follow me, my hound and servitor\nFrom this hour forth!\n\nSATAN\n\n                      You have grown very witty.\nYour wit, however, does not please me.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                      Please you!\nThere are few things that I desire less.\nTo heel!\n\nSATAN\n\n         What fiends possess you? Ah, I see!\nYou are still thinking of that wager made,\nThat jest of ours.\n\nFAUST\n\n                   I am still thinking of it.\n\nSATAN\n\nYou do not mean that now you wish to claim\nThat forfeit seriously?\n\nFAUST\n\n                        I mean quite that.\n\nSATAN\n\nWhat an amazing man you really are!\nFor your own sake, I tried to offer you\nA splendid paradise; I brought you here\nAt infinite cost and trouble; you have had\nAn hour of insight and experience\nNew and instructive to you; your best friend\nHas found eternal bliss: and now you turn,\nAnd just because your uttermost crazy whim\nIs not quite satisfied with what he grasped\nThankfully, you revert, with sorry taste,\nTo my old careless generous remarks.\nI do not think your friends at home would call it\nA sporting attitude.\n\nFAUST\n\n                      The jungle shakes--\nDo you not hear it?--with the stifled, choked\nLaughter of leopards, elephants, hyenas,\nRhinoceroses, apes, pythons, and tigers,\nWho hear you and are overcome with mirth....\nI also laugh with them.\n\nSATAN\n\n                        Magnanimous\nYour laughter sounds! True, you have beaten me,\nAnd I am at your mercy. By some whim,\nTrick, technicality, your mind rejects\nA noble paradise; and to my pledge\nYou therefore are entitled. And I stand\nReady to pay it.\n\nFAUST\n\n                 Ah, at last we have\nAcknowledgment of it! Frankness is good\nEven for the Devil, Satan.\n\nSATAN\n\n                           I have been\nFrank with you always. And, if to your taste,\nI will be franker still. Your stake is won;\nYou have your triumph: but does it quite fill\nThe chambers of your heart? Will it suffice\nIn place of that bright paradise you dreamed\nMight be your gain as loser? Ah, my friend,\nIn copper you have won, but lost in gold!\nAnd victory will not requite for that\nYour empty treasury.\n\nFAUST\n\n                     Not empty quite;\nYou are too modest.\n\nSATAN\n\n                    Oh, if you choose, my pledge\nShall be fulfilled, and I will be your dog--\nSnarling a little, sometimes--snapping at\nYour friends and furniture and lady-loves--\nBut yet your dog. However, I can do\nBetter for you than that....\n\nFAUST\n\n                             Enough! Enough!\n\nSATAN\n\nBut hear me! You'll admit, a feather's weight,\nA hair's breadth only held you from the gates\nThat Oldham entered. Almost they sufficed\nYour spirit; yes, a moth's wing could have blown\nYou toward them! 'Twas so nearly I fulfilled\nAll that I promised. Therefore when I speak,\nYou will, for justice's sake, concede I am\nNo absolute bungler, no coarse-palated\nPlebeian, as to paradises.\n\nFAUST\n\n                           No.\nI will admit that.\n\nSATAN\n\n                   Good! Now, I would make\nOne final offer to you.\n\n                        Faust, I know\nIn other regions, beneath other skies,\nOne haven more, the only one of earth\nThat can be judged in glory to surpass\nThis paradise you entered not. My faith\nIs absolute that it is to your need\nUtterly moulded. Like your heart itself,\nIts halls are structured, destinate for you\nAs perfect refuge. And I say to you:\nGive me the leave, and I will lead you there\nFor one supreme and ultimate trial of choice\nThat has no doubtful outcome. And my pledge\nShall still be valid! If this refuge gives\nNot all that you desire, you still may claim\nMy service as your slave. Thus do you risk\nNo atom, but have gain of one last chance\nTo win the paradise you hunger for!\n\nFAUST\n\nA pleasing logic; but I do not trust\nThe mind behind it.\n\nSATAN\n\n                    Trust it, or distrust--\nWhat matter?--when the issue is so plain!\n\nFAUST\n\nAway! Away!\n\nSATAN\n\n             Well, if this hope is vain\nTo urge you, let despair serve in its stead\nAs roweled spur. For see where now you stand:\nThe mock of destiny--the man who lost\nAll joys of the bright many that the world\nCherishes! Aye, and even lost his friend,\nHis one deep lasting friend--and stood thereafter\nFixed like a donkey.... Though I led you on\nFrom paradise to paradise, and none\nSufficed you--that were surely better sport--\nTesting and trying with sublime contempt--\nThan finger-twirling! But not thus I lead.\nFor now you shall, you shall have paradise!\n\nFAUST\n\nDeep in my soul, there is a sense that loathes\nPacts with the Devil. Yet the sanctioned powers\nEstablished in the world have proved them void\nAnd ignorant of paradise.... Where lies it?\n\nSATAN\n\nFollow, and I will lead.\n\nFAUST\n\n                         A long path?\n\nSATAN\n\n                                      Yes.\n\nFAUST\n\nOn! But your bondage waits you at the end.\n\nSATAN\n\nAh, jester, jester!... Come--give me your hand!\n\n\n                                CURTAIN\n\n\n\n\n                             THE THIRD ACT\n\n\n_The scene is the nave of a great cathedral. Two rows of many-shafted\ncolumns stretch back to where, in the far background, rises the\nelaborate magnificence of the High Altar.\n\nThe nave is empty, except for an occasional figure moving at the far\nend of the long central aisle, and an occasional attendant in\nsacerdotal robes making ready the Altar.\n\nFaust, entering from the right, and Satan, entering from the left,\nmeet in the foreground. Satan is dressed in the dark robes of a\npriest._\n\nFAUST\n\nI care not for your masquerade attire;\nBut let that pass.... Well, I have kept your hour.\nAnd this perhaps is not unfitting place\nTo make confession that you weary me\nA little. In this running to and fro\nOver the earth, my inclination tires\nOf your companionship. I am resolved,\nIf three days' time brings forth no new event,\nTo end this, and reclaim you to obey\nMy will.\n\nSATAN\n\n         I am content; three days will serve.\n\nFAUST\n\nGood! Meanwhile, 'tis at least some recompense\nThat we return from airy Eastern domes\nGlittering in blank sunlight, unto lands\nWhere men erect their temples to the gods\nIn forms whose light and shadow, stress and play\nOf arch and buttress, satisfies my blood\nBetter than does barbaric loveliness.\nThe dome that poises its clear perfect curves\nRising above the palm-trees, with the look\nAs of a winged bubble lightly resting\nOn needless masonry--that symbolled form\nOf heavenly perfection never fills\nMy heart as do these knotted buttresses\nAnd writhing ribs and vaults that strain in fight--\nAnd are victorious, as they raise to heaven\nThe climbing spires of such an edifice.\n\nSATAN\n\nQuite right--but if you'll let me interrupt--\nThere is a woman yonder who, I think,\nIs waiting for a chance to speak to you.\nShe looks at you, and hesitates, and turns--\nAs though a little fearful to approach\nSo great a person.\n\nFAUST\n\n                   Where is she? I see.\nI wonder if I know her.\n\nSATAN\n\n                        She is coming.\n\n    [_A young woman, hardly more than a girl, comes\n    from between the pillars and approaches Faust.\n    Satan withdraws a little as she approaches._\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\nI did not want to interrupt your talk;\nBut, Mr. Faust, I wished so much to speak\nTo you. You do not know me?\n\nFAUST\n\n                                Why, it seems...\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\nOf course you do not; why should you remember?\nBut I have seen your face so many times\nWhen you perhaps not noticed me at all,\nThat I feel half-acquainted. Mr. Brander\nSpeaks of you, too, so much that I have grown\nTo think I know you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                      Ah; yes, Brander....\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\n                                        Still\nI have not told you who I am, and you\nDo not yet know me. I am Mrs. Brander.\n\nFAUST\n\nWhat! Mrs. Brander! Ah, delighted ... yes....\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\nYou had not heard that we were married?\n\nFAUST\n\n                                        No.\nOf course, I am astounded; it's delightful--\nAnd most surprising.\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\n                     It was very sudden--\nWhile you were gone.\n\nFAUST\n\n                     I see. Yes, I'm surprised\nAnd charmed. It's strange, at first I could not bring\nYou to my memory.\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\n                       I don't believe\nThat you can yet!\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Why....\n\nTHE WOMAN\n\n                          I don't wonder at it.\nI used to whisk about and peer at you\nAs you came in....\n\nFAUST\n\n                   Are you then ... then are you ...\nMidge?\n\nMIDGE\n\n        Yes! exactly.\n\nFAUST\n\n                      This is very charming.\nNow I remember perfectly, of course,\nDear Mrs. Brander! I shall hope to see\nBrander himself to-morrow. Give him, please,\nMy warmest wishes.\n\nMIDGE\n\n                   We shall hope to see you\nIn our apartment soon. It's very tiny\nAnd in a quite unfashionable street;\nBut it looks out across a bit of park\nTo westward, as I've always hoped it would.\nSome days the sunset lights are lovely there.\nYou must come look at them.\n\nFAUST\n\n                            Thank you--indeed\nI shall be very glad to!\n\nMIDGE\n\n                         And I know--\nHow shall I say it?--that you'll think me strange,\nAnd that I cannot ever be your friend\nAs Mr. Brander is. I know so little--\n\nFAUST\n\nDear Mrs. Brander!\n\nMIDGE\n\n                   But I am so eager\nThat you should give me just a little trial--\nI want so much to know you, and so much\nHe should not lose you....\n\nFAUST\n\n                          Why, you make me feel\nQuite like a monster!\n\nMIDGE\n\n                      Then you'll come?\n\nFAUST\n\n                                       I'll come!\n\nMIDGE\n\nGood-bye--and don't forget me.\n\n    [_Midge gives him her hand, and moves away\n    smiling._\n\nFAUST\n                              Well, of all\nImpossible, grotesque, outrageous tricks\nThat Brander could have played upon himself!\nMarried--the fool, the fool!--And yet she is\nCuriously sweet and fresh, that kitchen-maid.\n\nSATAN\n\nAre you quite through?\n\nFAUST\n                       Quite, thank you.... It is strange....\nBut I forget; you are not interested.\nWhat is it you would say now?\n\nSATAN\n\n                                I have things\nGraver to speak of than admiring ladies\nOr Gothic architecture. Here, to-day,\nUnto your doubting eyes there shall be made\nA revelation of profounder scope\nThan aught that life has brought you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                  The hour strikes\nTardily; I am wearier than I was\nWhen on this trial we entered.\n\nSATAN\n\n                               You have looked\nAskance at me these many days, perplexed\nTo reconcile the fountains of my will\nWith my strange acts, and with the dark report\nThat you have heard concerning me. Dear friend,\nBe you not angry, now I say to you\nIn full confession, that from day to day\nI have deceived you: I have hid my face\nEven from my friend: I have with doubtful mask\nIn alien guises tempted you, to try\nYour metal. But the hour of trial is past;\nThe event is sure; and now I ope my heart\nAnd show to you what few of living men\nHave guessed--my final secret.\n\nFAUST\n\n                               Play no tricks.\nBefore me, Satan; try no mumming game.\nIf you speak truth, let riddles cloak it not.\n\nSATAN\n\nListen, and be truth's judge. I am not such\nAs men esteem me; and my spirit's springs\nRise not from buried and infernal realms,\nBut like your own, out of the fount of God\nThey have their being. I, though lowliest far,\nYet am a servant of the House of God--\nDeputed to mine office by His hand,\nAnd on His mission.\n\nFAUST\n\n                    You are trifling with me.\n\nSATAN\n\nI speak the gospel of the living God.\n\nFAUST\n\nAre you not Lord of Evil? God doubtless asks\nThat service of you?\n\nSATAN\n\n                     God is infinite,\nLikewise His wisdom. His omniscience wills\nThat I go forth among the haunts of men\nAnd offer evil to their touch. Thereby,\nSome spurn me--and the force whereby they spurn\nLifts them up nearer to His arms. Some take\nThe sin I offer, fall from grace, go down--\nAnd lost in fathomless gulfs of wickedness,\nCry out with utter yearning to His love\nThat it may save them, and repentant turn\nTheir prodigal faces toward His doors again,\nNever to wander more. But some few souls,\nWho neither spurn temptation nor repent\nAfter their fall--these unregenerate\nIt is mine office wholly to destroy\nAnd cleanse the universe for the praise of God.\nThus does all evil serve His mighty throne,\nAnd all return to Him.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                I have no power\nTo take the measure of the words you speak.\nWhy tell me such things?\n\nSATAN\n\n                         I would tell you all\nAnd show to you at last your destiny.\nThe vanities of the world, the woes and sins,\nAre but the acid by whose fiery touch\nI sort the gold from out the transient brass\nAnd purify and fine it that it be\nWorthy God's altar. My beloved friend,\nSuch was your trial; thus have I tempted you\nWith things averse to God, with forms and faiths\nOutcast and separate from Him. You have seen\nThe whole world's vanities; you have come to know\nThat in this world's illusion is no power\nWhose love is refuge: even the living death\nOf cold Nirvana frights you. Thus at last,\nKnowing that you are powerless, and the world\nBare of salvation for your feebleness,\nYou stand on this great threshold; and your eyes\nThat see despair and loneliness shall raise\nTheir sight to heaven; and peace shall fold you round;\nAnd God, who is our Father, shall be yours.\n\nFAUST\n\nThis is not truth! My fevered eyes are weak\nTo look into this glowing maze of fire\nWith vision. All the ramparts of the world\nReel round me. I have scoffed God all my days,\nBelieving pain--your province of the world--\nProof of His non-existence. And you come\nCrying His glory, testifying His faith,\nExhorting me to seek Him.... I am lost\nWhere naught is known to me.\n\nSATAN\n\n                        He is your hope,\nYour sole salvation in a universe\nWhere never other form shall comfort you--\nA waif except for Him. So have all souls--\nThe holy and the pure--from age to age,\nLearned, homesick for His home. Their frustrate hopes,\nTheir burdens heavier than by mortal strength\nCan be sustained, their impotence, bow down\nEach spirit: and it cries: \"O God, support\nMy helplessness; unto Thy perfect will\nDo I resign my vain and evil hopes,\nMy burdens; and Thy Will Be Done Forever.\"\nThus, with arms folded on despairing breast,\nWith head bowed to the inscrutable decree,\nThey seek Him: and a sudden glory fills\nThe humbled bosom; all His stars and thrones\nShine down upon it; all His majesty\nEnters that lowly door, lifts up, sustains\nThe sundered soul; and His beneficence\nWith more than father-love enfolds the heart\nJoined to His own forever. From His light\nReflected radiance pours; to the dark sight\nComes glimpse of the high justice of God's will;\nAnd all roads lead to Heaven, and all hearts lie\nWithin His love, and all's well with the world.\n\n    [_Deep organ music begins to roll through the\n    arches of the cathedral. Candles are lighted one by\n    one on the High Altar. Worshippers begin to enter\n    the nave: they pass down the long central aisle\n    and gather in groups at the far end, near the\n    Altar. Faust stands leaning against a pillar,\n    silent and lost in meditation.\n\nBrander enters among the worshippers. He passes\nthe spot where Faust is standing, glances at him and\nstops, astonished._\n\nBRANDER\n\nYou have come back! I had not heard of it.\nWhere have you been these many months? I long\nTo talk with you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                  Yes, come and see me soon.\nIt's a long story.... I congratulate you\nUpon your marriage....\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     Then you know....\n\nFAUST\n\n                                     She came\nAnd spoke to me a little while ago.\n\nBRANDER\n\nIt must seem strange to you beyond my power\nEver to quite unravel. But for me\nAll things are clear; and to my blinded sight\nMorning has come--in this thing, as in all\nThe doubts that once enslaved me.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                  Do you mean...\n\nBRANDER\n\nCome here aside before the service starts.\nI owe it you to tell you. I have changed\nIn your long absence....\n\nFAUST\n\n                          These are curious words.\nI do not understand.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     To understand,\nYou must hear all. You know my life--how vain\nIts occupations, how absorbed I moved\nIn this day's folly and to-morrow's lure--\nHow petty trifles made my whole small round\nOf being--selfish trifles, nothing worth,\nStained with a cruelty that I would forget.\nThat night we talked together--you and I\nAnd Oldham--in your rooms, I wandered home\nSorely distressed. For you had stirred in me\nA gnawing doubt whether the whole of life\nWas not mere child's play.\n\nFAUST\n\n                           I am sorry if--\n\nBRANDER\n\nIt was the kindest act man ever did\nIn all my life! I peered into my heart:\nI saw myself Judas to innocence,\nBetraying lightly with a careless kiss\nA mortal body and immortal soul;\nI saw no thing in all my days to claim\nA sane man's approbation; one by one\nEach glittering bauble that I late had loved\nCrumbled to dust beneath the parching fire\nOf reason.... And that night, I walked in Hell.\n\nFAUST\n\nPoor Brander! And my mocking did all this?\n\nBRANDER\n\nThank God for it! That night I saw my joys\nLike some rank thicket of bright vanities\nMasking a precipice. A sense of sin\nAnd loathing overcame me, and the power\nOf utter terror filled me. I beheld\nThe evil riot of gross earthy things\nThat had o'ergrown me. Like a burden lay\nThat sense upon me, and it pressed me down\nTo a despondence deep beyond all words,\nBeyond all thought. And no escape I saw\nExcept the bullet....\n\nFAUST\n\n                      What a faith we pin\nUpon that bullet!\n\nBRANDER\n\n                  Thus the doubtful days\nPassed like a nightmare. Till, one Sabbath morn,\nAs restlessly I paced, some random mood\nLed me to enter this cathedral's doors\nAt hour of service. As I knelt, with lips\nUnknown to prayer, the mighty music rolled\nOver my heart like an all-purging flood,\nAnd a voice chanted: \"He that loveth life\nShall lose it; he that hateth this world's life\nShall keep the life eternal.\" And a voice\nShortly thereafter sang, in angel tones:\n\"Come, let our feet return unto the Lord;\nFor He hath torn, and He will heal us.\" And\nMy soul cried: \"Yield thy burdens to the Lord,\nUpon His love cast thine unworthy self,\nAnd bid His Will Be Done.\"\n\n                            And then my soul\nMelted as in the warmth of His embrace.\nMy guilt was gone like night before the sun:\nLight blinded me; an infinite love and joy\nLifted me up, a child again, from earth\nInto such regions as my mortal speech\nCan never utter. And from that hour forth,\nGod has been with me.... Now you know my tale.\n\nFAUST\n\nYou teach me more of marvels than I guessed\nWas yet unlearned by me.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                         No words can teach\nThese marvels to a heart that has not known\nGod's glories.\n\nFAUST\n               Then this mystery of the heart\nIs what men mean when of the faith of God\nThey speak? I thought 'twas dogma, service, prayer;\nBut this is life, is vision.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                             Aye, and more!\nNow do I walk in meadows of calm light;\nThe love of God is over me; I faint\nAlmost beneath its sweetness and wild joy.\nMy whole heart's toil is how to merit it\nEven a little.\n\nSATAN (_raising his hand to bless_)\n\n               By the grace of God\nYou shall be worthy servant, O my son.\n\nFAUST\n\nThis, then, is what God's vision-seers behold--\nThis revelation veiled unto mine eyes--\nThis love unfelt by me--this light of dawn\nBeyond our darkened night.... I was too far\nEstranged from Him, of too unworthy will,\nBowed by too sore a burden....\n\n    [_The music of the organ rolls forth once more;\n    and, at the far end of the nave, the choir takes up\n    the music._\n\n                            VOICES SINGING\n\n        From the waters of Zion,\n    From the fountains of peace,\n    Pour the floods on whose bosom\n    Thy seeking shall cease.\n\n        There the winds of His garments\n    Shall lull thee to rest.\n    There the night of His watching\n    Shall enter thy breast.\n\n        Thou shalt sleep, and awaken;\n    On His morrow, to be\n    As a star in His heavens,\n    A wave in His sea.\n\nFAUST\n\nWith old, profound, unutterable grief\nMy spirit speaks in me: as, many a time\nIn childhood, at the hour of evening dusk,\nWhen all the room was still and shadowy,\nI, at my mother's knee, wept out my heart\nAnd knew not why I wept. And I am drawn\nOut of myself upon the music's tide,\nWith nameless sorrowing, with childlike pain--\nAs though in careless play-hours of the day\nI had done hurt to someone that I loved.\nAh, I am homesick; and in all the world\nThere is no knee at which I can weep out\nMy loneliness. There is no breast of peace\nAnd silence and forgiveness for this child\nIn any dusk-strewn chamber....\n\nBRANDER\n\n                              There is God!\n\nFAUST\n\nO God, can Thine arms fold me? Can my weight\nOf loneliness and failure and despair\nWith the day's fruitage, find a child's release\nIn Thy great tenderness? I am a child;\nAnd life's vast terrors gather round my soul;\nAnd I am frightened. I am weary, Lord!\nIt darkens; and the storms creep on with night;\nThe shadows come; the wanderer would turn home.\n\n[_Faust falls to his knees; he bows his head. Again\nthe organ throbs, the choir sings._\n\n                            VOICES SINGING\n\n        To His peace shalt thou yield thee;\n    In His love shalt thou sleep;\n    All the rills of thy valleys\n    Shall merge in His deep.\n\n        To His hands shalt thou offer\n    All hope thou hast known.\n    His hope and His glory\n    Shall compass thine own.\n\n        And the vain stars of longing\n    Shall fade in His sun;\n    And the vain hand shall stay;\n    And His Will Shall Be Done.\n\nSATAN\n\nLet us beside our brother kneel in prayer\nBeseeching mercy.\n\n    [_Satan and Brander kneel beside Faust._\n\nBRANDER\n\n                  Brother in the Lord,\nLet us together from devoted hearts\nRepeat: \"Thy Will Be Done.\"\n\n    [_Faust continues to kneel in silence. The music\n    ceases._\n\nBRANDER\n\n                            Faust, let us pray:\n\"Father, we do beseech Thee for Thy light\"...\n\nSATAN\n\nBrother, pray thus: \"Thy Will Be Done\"...\n\nFAUST (_rising_)\n\n                                   What will?...\n\nBRANDER\n\nFaust!\n\nFAUST\n\nLost is my way among eternal shadows.\nDarkened is every light; and clouds are rolled\nWith blackening curtain over all the stars\nWithin my heaven. But I stand upright\nNow to the end, no traitor to that dawn\nI cannot image.\n\nSATAN\n\n                What do you mean?\n\nFAUST\n\n                                       Begone,\nJudas!...\n\n          Ah, Brander, would that I could yield\nMyself to Him who has received your burdens!\nBut to me seems it as another sleep,\nLike that Nirvana which I put aside\nIn other gardens of temptation. Sleep--\nSleep that should have no waking--happy sleep--\nAn anodyne for which my spirit yearns\nBut dare not take--a yielding to some Will,\nWhose Will, we know not, nor do greatly care\nSo long it be not our will....\n\n                              Thus may yield\nThe weary; I am weary, but not yet\nTo such last slumber. Thus may yield the base;\nI am not base. Thus may those spirits yield\nWho, poisoned by some madness in their blood,\nDespise life's being; but not yet will I\nSo utterly despise it. Though in gulfs\nOf yet unsounded ruin I should die\nAt the end miserably, I still shall seek\nIn life itself my refuge: not in God\nThat stands apart from life, on heights of peace.\nAll my desires, my visions, my dreams, my unrest,\nMy loathing and my longing will I clutch\nAnd cry: \"With all its bitterness on my head,\n_My Will_ be done, not Thy Will!\"\n\nBRANDER\n\n                                        Blasphemy!\nAh, Faust, what madness!...\n\nFAUST\n\n                         With calm sight, I speak\nNo blasphemy, but truth. Shall I buy peace\nSo easily? Toss my burdens to God's Will--\nInto the fathomless void of that unknown?\nSuch were the last, the great apostacy....\nI go into a darkness past your thought--\nInto an emptiness you know not of--\nA night profounder that it late has held\nMarsh-lights of promise. My last altar lies\nSmoking in ruins; and I stand alone\nOf all the universe. But my Will be done!\nMy errant tortured Will, my bitter Will,\n_My_ Will, _my_ Will!\n\nBRANDER\n\n                                Flee, ere the awful wrath\nOf God smite down these walls, these poisoned stones,\nThat hear your words! Flee, ere the heavens rain forth\nLightnings to blast us for these horrors!\n\nFAUST\n\n                                          Nay!\nIn this dim hour of desolation's reign\nUpon my soul, I summon to my soul\nAll powers that good or evil may consign\nTo the most lonely man in all the world;\nI lift my voice, burdened with all the weight\nOf loathing and of longing, and I cry:\nMy curse upon Thee, lure of dying hearts!\nMay lightnings smite Thy altars back to earth!\n\nBRANDER\n\nFather, forgive! He knows not what he does....\n\n                                CURTAIN\n\n\n\n\n                            THE FOURTH ACT\n\n\n_The scene is a public lecture-hall. To the left rises a platform, on\nwhich stands a reading-desk. To the right are rows of chairs arranged\nas for an audience. In the front row of these sit four old men,\npatiently and silently waiting. One is reading a newspaper.\n\nSuddenly there bursts into the hall a rout of wildly gay and dancing\nmaskers: Harlequin, Columbine, a Pig, Pantaloon, an enormously tall\nGhost, Clowns, a Skeleton, Ballet-girls, Oriental Princesses, Monks,\nCourtiers, Turks and Jew Pedlers. The first few attempt to draw back\non seeing the chairs and the four old men; but they are pushed on by\nthose behind. Once in, they all circle about in a crazy dance, singing\nover and over the same verse._\n\nTHE MASKERS\n\nOh, children, children, New Year's Day\nIs more than half a year away.\nAnd we might get most awful dry\nIf we should wait for the Fourth of July.\nSo let us celebrate now and here\nWith rah, rah, rah and a bottle of beer!\n\n    [_One of the maskers, who is dressed as a clown,\n    raises his hands, ineffectually trying to hush the\n    rest._\n\nCLOWN (_shouting_)\n\nStop! Stop! I want to teach another verse\nTo you before we go back to the others.\n\n    [_Loud laughter. The song continues._\n\nTHE SKELETON (_shouting_)\n\nIsn't one bad enough?\n\nCLOWN\n\n                      A poor thing--but\nIt is mine own.\n\nTHE PIG\n\n                So much the worse for you!\n\nONE OF THE OLD MEN (_rising_)\n\nGentlemen! There's to be a lecture here.\n\nCLOWN\n\nIs that all? Well, I'll give it you myself.\n\nA MONK\n\nNot if we see you first!\n\nTHE PIG\n\n                         My God! Let's run!\n\nSKELETON\n\nBack! Or the others will drink all the punch!\n\n    [_The mob of maskers turbulently surges out again,\n    leaving the hall quiet and empty except for the\n    four old men._\n\nAN OLD MAN\n\nThey are a noisy lot.\n\nSECOND OLD MAN\n\n                      Yes.\n\nTHE FIRST OLD MAN\n\n                           There must be\nParty upstairs?\n\nSECOND OLD MAN\n\n                Yes, I suppose there is.\n\nFIRST OLD MAN\n\nThey begin early.\n\nTHIRD OLD MAN\n\n                      Early? Yes, or late.\nThis is the end of last night's party, which\nBegan at twelve, and likely'll last till noon.\nI know, for I'm the janitor.\n\nFIRST OLD MAN\n\n                              Well! Well!\n\n    [_Two men enter, look around and take seats in the\n    chairs set for the audience. One carries a small\n    black surgical case; the other has a green bag\n    under his arm._\n\nDOCTOR\n\nWe seem to be a little early--or\nHave we made some mistake?\n\nLAWYER\n\n                           No, ten's the hour.\nBut I was anxious that we should be prompt,\nAnd so have rather overdone our haste.\n\nDOCTOR\n\nIt doesn't matter; we can wait a bit.\nHow curiously impatient, though, you are\nTo hear this talk! I personally have doubts\nWhether it's worth our trouble.\n\nLAWYER\n\n                                Well, I know\nThe man, however slightly; you do not,\nAnd so can hardly share my expectation.\nBut he has been, throughout these many years,\nSo secretive, so self-contained, so deep\nIn matters that I could not guess, that now,\nWhen he at last promises to proclaim\nSome strange discovery, I half believe\nIt will be worth our coming.\n\n    [_Two women enter together. The younger one is\n    leading a child by the hand. The older, a gaunt,\n    spinsterly-looking figure, peers about with a\n    near-sighted glance._\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\n                                  Take that seat.\nAnd now be quiet.\n\nCHILD\n\n                  Mother, will he have\nThe Devil with him?\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\n                     I don't know. The child\nHas been completely crazy since I told her\nThat I would bring her with me.\n\nOLD WOMAN\n\n                                 I am just\nA little curious myself. I learned\nWhen I was young all that they thought was known\nAbout the Devil; and if this Mr. Faust\nHas really made some new discovery\nAbout him, it seems well that even the young\nShould be informed of it.\n\n    [_A number of detached men and women enter and take\n    seats silently. They are followed by two plumbers\n    in overalls, carrying the tools of their trade\n    still with them._\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nWhew, but the boss will skin us for this trick!\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\nGo, if you like. But I intend to stay.\nI have not been, through seventeen long years,\nPhilosopher myself, now to let slip\nA chance of hearing such a talk as this.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nOh, I won't go.\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\n                 You'd better not. They say\nThat all the rumors wholly underrate\nThe real importance of his talk to-day.\nI've been informed, on good authority,\nThat he will have the Devil on the platform\nAnd publicly enchain him to a cart\nFor all of us to see.\n\n    [_The two plumbers have taken their seats. A man\n    behind them leans forward now and interrupts them._\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                      What's that? A cart?\nHe means to drive the Devil as a horse?\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\nQuite probably, quite probably.\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                                Well, that\nWill be outrageous, in these troubled times\nOf strikes and lock-outs. Without any doubt,\nIf he goes trying to harness up the Devil,\nIt will precipitate a teamsters' strike.\nUsing non-union horses always does.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nDo you think that? Why, that would be a shame,\nWhen times are bad already.\n\nCHILD\n\n                            Mother, Mother!\nWill there be moving pictures?\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\n                               I don't know.\nDon't talk so loud.\n\n    [_Two prosperous-looking men enter. One is elderly,\n    the other young._\n\nBANKER\n\n                     Do not apologize\nNow that you've brought me. As I said at first,\nI am prepared to see a mountebank\nPerform his pretty tricks of eloquence\nTo set the crowd agape. Why, once a week\nThe Ethical Society hires one\nTo work the same performance--quite the same\nEach time. Unearth a few forgotten doubts,\nOr dig your elbow into some new dogma,\nAnd you will see the mob fawn at your feet,\nBelieving you the greatest mind since Plato.\n\nRICH YOUNG MAN\n\nI'm sure he isn't that kind.\n\nBANKER\n\n                              We shall see!\nAnd afterwards, the drinks shall be on you.\n\n    [_A gawky young man who has flour in his hair, and\n    a vivacious and pertly dressed girl enter\n    together._\n\nGIRL\n\nI go to all the lectures that I can.\nI do think culture is the grandest thing;\nAnd one acquires it so easily\nNowadays that one shouldn't let it slip.\n\nBAKER\n\nI'd go to lectures, too, if I could go\nAlways with you.\n\nGIRL\n\n                 Well, now, perhaps I'll try\nTo educate you!\n\nBAKER\n\n                        Oh, I wish you would!\n\n    [_Satan enters, dressed as an artisan. He takes a\n    seat in the far corner, out of sight of the\n    platform. Two young men enter. Both have books\n    under their arms._\n\nYOUNG STUDENT\n\nHis is the subtlest mind I ever knew.\nThe gulfs through which he whirled bewildered me\nWhen he would talk. So I am quite prepared\nFor a great treat to-day.\n\nYOUNGER STUDENT\n\n                          Oh, I forgot\nMy note-book. Can you tear a sheet from yours?\n\nSATAN (_to a man beside him who rises, apparently tired\nof waiting_)\n\nWhat, going? Well, I wouldn't, if I were you.\nYou ought to hear this: I have had a hand\nIn getting him to speak; and I am sure\nThere will be something doing.\n\nTHE MAN\n\n                               Well, I'll stay,\nSince you, of the committee, vouch for it.\n\n    [_More people enter and take their seats._\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER (_to his companion_)\n\nWhat do you get by being philosopher?\nI don't see how you do it. I could never\nThink about nothing all the time, like you.\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\nPerhaps your mind is not just made for it.\nIt takes a thinker, that it does. And I\nDid not get into it so easy, either.\nI read a lot of books before I saw\nThe greatness of Philosophy. Now I wonder\nHow I got on without it. Why, to-day\nI could not clean a sewer in peace of mind\nIf I did not know that, when I got home,\nI could philosophize on Space and Time.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nIt must be wonderful to know these things.\n\n    [_Brander and Midge enter together. They seem to\n    find some difficulty in choosing their seats._\n\nMIDGE\n\nAre you quite sure that we can hear him here?\n\nBRANDER\n\nYes; and besides, I do not wish to sit\nToo near the front. I'd rather not have come\nAt all to-day. But you...\n\nMIDGE\n\n                           Oh, don't go back\nNow on your promise! I must hear him speak.\nI must, I must. I cannot tell you why;\nI do not know. But I have never seen\nA face that seemed to promise me so much--\nThings that I cannot utter, cannot think.\n\nBRANDER\n\nI never want to see his face again.\nI shall try not to listen.\n\nCHILD\n\n                           Mother, when\nWill the show start?\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\n                     Hush, very soon! Yes, see--\nThere he is coming in.\n\nCHILD\n\n                       Oh, goody, goody!\n\n    [_Faust enters the hall and mounts the platform. He\n    busies himself for a moment adjusting the reading\n    desk; then turns toward the audience, gripping the\n    desk steadily, and waits a moment more for the stir\n    to subside._\n\nFAUST\n\nI come before you with unwilling lips--\nNot led by eagerness, or wont of speech;\nBeing not of those who easily proclaim\nSmall miracles to move you. But the force\nOf grave necessity has bid me cast\nAll thought save one aside, and in your midst,\nUtter strange words, with lips that must obey\nThe soul that wills not silence.\n\n                                 For I come\nAnnouncing not the common verities\nOf learned books, or laboratory lore,\nOr ancient heresies; as speaks the fool,\nSo speak I--from my heart. What I have seen,\nThat shall you see, and with grim gladness hold\nClose in your hearts. Yes, all the world shall see it--\nI am a tower burning to light the world!\n\n    (_He pauses a moment, meditatively_)\n\nOLD WOMAN (_whispering_)\n\nHe has a good opinion of himself.\n\nFAUST\n\nI have beheld the toil and pain of life,\nIts emptiness and defeat; I have beheld\nHearts, weary with recurrence of the days\nThat held no sweetness, turn in trust to where\nIn high aerial spaces far from earth\nGod in his heaven to all the weary ones\nOffers a refuge. And in such a mood\nWas I, too, led toward heaven by one whom now\nI know my foe--Satan. Toward God I turned,\nSeeking in Him fulfilment of all hopes\nThat earth had thwarted. Then, in the hour of prayer\nAnd revelation, from my deepest breast\nFlashed lightnings. And I saw the Lord of Hosts\nHigh on a mountain, inaccessible\nTo yearning men, who, mastered by a dream,\nTurn skyward from our dark and struggling earth.\nI saw the crafty Satan urging on\nThe heavenward-yearning myriads, while the world\nLay like a stagnant quagmire, to his sway\nWholly abandoned, and man's mortal house\nBurned in fierce conflagration of corruption.\nAnd lo! the lightnings from my heart smote forth\nAcross the heavens; and God dissolved like cloud,\nAnd through the cloud peered Satan's sinister face.\n\nFriends: God is dead; your God and mine is dead.\nAnd Satan in his place--Satan who is\nThe father of the gods--lures on your hearts\nUnto an idol in the untrodden skies,\nThat, while ye dream oblivious in the void,\nThe earth may crumble. Or if God there be,\nHe is the God of dying hearts and spent--\nA deity of chaos, for whose ends\nOne thing alone is mete--ruin of life,\nOf loathings and of longings that on earth\nRestlessly grapple with the powers of Hell.\nI know not if in regions yet unguessed\nSome gods may dwell, of nature fit to guide\nUs, the adventurers of an earthly fight.\nBut I have seen with eyes that cannot lie\nThat they reside not in this Devil's net--\nThis heavenly trust, this labyrinth of peace,\nWhich draws men on to nothingness....\n\n                                     And I cry\nWith all the passion of my baffled soul--\nCast down your God! Cast down your peace and trust\nIn His far Will! It is a solace mete\nFor slaves, not men. With bitter hand, destroy\nThis idol of destruction! Smite all haunts\nOf faith and resignation and defeat\nAnd rest and peace and comfort. Heaven and earth\nAlike are poisoned: somnolence in heaven,\nDecay on earth is regnant. Every faith\nAnd law and nation must in wreck go down\nFor us who see the death that taints their halls;\nAnd ruin shall walk reckless through the world,\nDestroying tombs where life is daily slain!\n\n    (_Faust pauses_)\n\nBRANDER (_rises suddenly from his place in the audience_)\n\nMy friends, I came to listen, not to speak.\nBut when such words as these from impious lips\nFall lightly, I must rise here to refute\nTheir poisonous message. Three days since, I stood\nWith this man in the sacred halls of God,\nAnd witnessed in his heart the glory grow\nOf God's bright hope. Then suddenly from Hell,\nOr from his own deep, labyrinthine heart,\nSprang fiends to snatch him back from heaven's clear gate\nAnd God's deliverance. And his bitter lips,\nBy thirst so nearly quenched made bitterer yet,\nCried blasphemies against the powers of heaven\nAnd all bright starry hopes that light our days\nWith faith and glory. And the hand of God,\nInscrutably withheld, smote him not dumb,\nBut suffered him to go. Now in our sight\nHe rises to proclaim his searing doubt,\nHis hot destroying passion, and tears down\nOur fairest altars. I, who was his friend,\nHereby renounce him; and in sober words\nCounsel all men to flee the company\nOf one who hates the great hopes of the world!\n\n    [_As Brander sits down, there is some scattered\n    applause in the audience. Faces are turned toward\n    him. Midge sits motionless, her face buried in her\n    hands._\n\nFAUST\n\nI scarce foresaw that my laborious task\nShould profit by the aid of willing hands\nSo freely offered. Well, the Devil moves still\nUnchained on earth; and while he toils, your toil\nIs of small matter. You have ranged yourself\nWith things fast dying; and our feet--the feet\nOf trampling hordes--shall pass above your head,\nAs we shall pass over all creeds and laws,\nAll stately chambers and respected homes\nAnd hearths and council-halls and sleek vile marts--\nWe, the destroyers of destruction!\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                                    Here!\nDon't you go shaking any fist at me!\n\nGIRL\n\nI think it's awful. Someone ought to stop him.\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\nThe man is crazy!\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\n                  Say! Would you destroy\nSpace and Time, too?\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\n                     Hooray for hell broke loose!\n\nBUTCHER\n\nOut with him! He's an anarchist!\n\nBANKER\n\n                                 I'm not\nReligious; but I cannot stand for that.\n\nYOUNG STUDENT\n\nOh, let him have a chance!\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                           Not if I know it!\nDamn such a man!\n\n    [_Satan suddenly rises in his place with commanding\n    gestures. The people stare at him, and after a\n    moment are silent to hear him speak._\n\nSATAN\n\n                  My friends, I think we all--\nOr most of us--agree that talk like this\nIs a destructive influence, to be met\nWith frowns, in justice to society.\nSuch words disgrace humanity, affront\nRespectability, and fill with shame\nOur hearts for such a speaker. Yet the rogue\nRequires but rope to save the law the toil\nOf trial and execution. I bespeak,\nTherefore, your patience for this gentleman;\nTill he has time to wind the hempen knot\nSecurely round his throat, let us sit by\nAnd hear him further.\n\nFAUST\n\n                       Thank you. You begin\nWell in my service.\n\nSATAN\n\n                    Aye, indeed, indeed!\nYou don't suppose a mouse-trap baits itself?\nFriends, let us hear him.\n\nRICH YOUNG MAN\n\n                          That sounds sensible.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nLet each dog have his day.\n\nOLD PLUMBER\n\n                           Sit down! Shut up!\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nLeave me alone!\n\nSATAN\n\n                One moment more, I pray,\nOf your kind patience. Sir, ere you proceed,\nI have a word to give you. I have heard\nTales of your cleverness in foiling twice\nThe Devil who sought to lead you to resign\nYour will to his. Perhaps it was not well\nThat you so spurned his euthanasia.\nBy your own devious path, you come at last\nTo where all facts are vain, all visions fade,\nAnd your old wager is a laughing-stock,\nSo valueless your will, so vain your power\nTo shape one end of hope. Life crumbles, falls,\nAround you; and your kind with horror see\nYour utter nakedness. But I have brought\nA little present for you: not so nice\nAs two the Devil once offered in its place;\nYet 'twill suffice. Men who would cheat the Devil\nCome, with a curious unanimity,\nTo where the lump of lead becomes a boon\nUnto the soul rejecting easier sleep.\nThe Devil claims his own in his own day.\n\n    (_He approaches the platform, and offers to Faust a\n    pistol_)\n\nYOUNG STUDENT\n\nWhat is he saying?\n\nCHILD\n\n                   Are they going to shoot?\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nBang yourself one! That's what it's for.\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                                 Good riddance!\nThere isn't room on earth for jokes like you!\n\nFAUST (_accepts the pistol_)\n\nIn such a spirit as you offer it,\nI do accept this token. In my hand\nAt least it shall lie safe, nor be a god:\nI worship not the bullet.... But beware\nWhat mummer's part you play in this strange scene.\nFor by the victory I have won of late,\nI am your master! And in grovelling dust\nBefore me you shall cringe, though all the world\nShun me, your conqueror. Vilest of slaves!\nAccept your servitude!\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                       Here! That's enough!\n\nGIRL\n\nYou brute!\n\nSATAN\n\n           Your slave. Command, and it shall be\nFulfilled. A little snarling now and then\nMeans naught.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\n              I will not let an honest man,\nA worthy citizen, be spoken to\nLike that by a damn anarchist while I\nCan raise a hand!\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                  Nor I!\n\nMERCHANT'S WIFE\n\n                         Go after him!\n\nFAUST\n\nSilence! Let not your eager efforts prove\nYou are the beast-herd he would bid you be!\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nWhat! Let us show him how to talk to us!\n\nSATAN\n\nSee, on his forehead, see! Where the deep lines\nMeet--do you see the blackened cross that grows\nEach moment darker with the curse of God!\nHe is branded, he is Cain!\n\nFAUST\n\n                           Down, slave! Fulfil\nNow my command, you who my bondsman are!\nSeal on these eyes--too blind to take the light--\nDarkness! And let me, turning from them, know\nThey have not peered into my open heart.\nYou are still my slave--though they are only fools.\n\nYOUNG PLUMBER\n\nDamn your infernal soul!\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                         Hit him a crack!\n\nOLD WOMAN\n\nStop all your noise.\n\nBUTCHER\n\n                     Here, let me go, you fool!\n\n    [_Suddenly aroused, some of the crowd surge forward\n    toward the platform. From the back of the room\n    someone hurls a chair, which strikes the great\n    chandelier: the lights instantly go out, leaving\n    the hall in total darkness. Confused cries,\n    footsteps, blows._\n\nCRIES\n\nWhat're you about?... Let go!... Where are the lights?...\n\n    [_Suddenly two wall-brackets are illuminated,\n    disclosing part of the crowd massed on the\n    platform. As they surge back, there remains on the\n    platform, fallen and motionless, the figure of\n    Faust. He raises his head slowly._\n\nFAUST\n\nAh, Satan!... worthy serf to my command!...\nGo! I release you. For I would not die\nWith such a slave-- Nay, though I die alone....\n\n    [_Suddenly the door bursts open, and in surge the\n    maskers, in greater numbers and even wilder tumult\n    than before. Dancing grotesquely, linked hand in\n    hand, they zigzag through the hall, overturning\n    chairs and singing at the top of their voices._\n\nTHE MASKERS\n\nOh, children, children, children dear,\nWe cannot wait for any New Year.\nSo let us celebrate now and here\nWith rah, rah, rah and a bottle of beer!\n\n                                CURTAIN\n\n\n\n\n                             THE FIFTH ACT\n\n\n_The scene is once more Faust's library. The dim slanting sunlight of\nlate afternoon streams through the open windows, touching the gold of\nbooks and the brown of furniture with an enamel-like brilliancy.\n\nBrander and Faust's butler stand just inside the door._\n\nBUTLER\n\nI am afraid you cannot see him now.\nThe doctor is still here. I do not know\nIf anyone may see him.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                       I will wait\nA moment, and perhaps may see the doctor\nAs he goes out. Have things been bad to-day?\n\nBUTLER\n\nYes, sir.\n\n    [_The doctor enters from the door on the left. The\n    butler goes out._\n\nBRANDER\n\n          How is he?\n\nDOCTOR\n\n                     As one might expect.\nThe fever's gone; but strength has gone with it:\nNo one can tell how long his heart will stand\nThe strain.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                 You see no hope?\n\nDOCTOR\n\n                                  I only see\nThat we are doing all we can for him.\nBeyond that, I can say no more than you.\n\nBRANDER\n\nYou think I should not see him?\n\nDOCTOR\n\n                                Oh, no harm.\nYou might have seen him when you came this morning\nIf you had waited. You can see him here.\nHe wanted to be in this room again,\nAnd I make no objection. Well, good-bye.\n\n    [_The doctor goes out. Brander moves restlessly\n    about the room. A moment later, the door on the\n    left opens, and Faust, reclining in an invalid's\n    chair, is wheeled into the room by the butler. He\n    is clad in a long dressing-gown; he is very pale.\n    The butler, after placing the chair before the\n    fireplace, goes out. Brander remains doubtfully in\n    the background; Faust does not observe his\n    presence._\n\nFAUST\n\nAgain these walls!--home to what barren dreams!--\nAnd home to me! O dreams and bitterness,\nHow are you gilded by this setting light\nOf afternoon! Meseems I have not been\nHappy save here, where all unhappiness\nOf mine had source and root. That forest holds\nNow nothing grievous to my eyes that see\nWhat once they saw not. Sweetness like the light\nOf setting suns now lingers over it\nIn my enchambering memory-- Life, life\nWith all its glow and wonder pours a flood\nOn this strait room whence I have watched the world--\nWhence I must go with all my love and wonder\nAs though no love and wonder I had won.\n\n    [_Faust bends his head, sinking into a daze of\n    thought. Brander doubtfully approaches him, and at\n    last touches his shoulder._\n\nBRANDER\n\nI have been heavy-hearted; but that thus\nI find you, overwhelms me....\n\nFAUST\n\n                              Why thus sad\nOver milk so irrevocably spilled?\n\nBRANDER\n\nI cannot utter what is in my heart.\nIt is as though I had with my own hand\nStricken you down. And yet I did not dream\nOf what would follow.... O Faust, Faust, forgive me!\n\nFAUST\n\nForgive you? Aye, and thank you! Greater things\nHung imminent than you dreamed of. For you set\nWild lightnings free in me that smote the dark\nFurled round me; and they grew and flashed and flamed\nEven as I fell. Aye, Brander, you who strove\nFor my salvation should rejoice at last--\nNow, past all doubts and wanderings, I am saved!\n\nBRANDER\n\nSaved! Ah, impossible!\n\nFAUST\n\n                           Saved! And the light\nOf glory fills me, though my physical frame\nTotters on dissolution. I believe!...\nThe night is over.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                   Faust! O dearest friend!\nMy heart refuses now to grasp such joy.\nIf it were possible! Can, can it be\nThat God has bent once more, and with cool touch\nDispelled the feverous mists? Oh, I could weep\nWith happiness to dream it!\n\nFAUST\n\n                            Nay, my words\nMean more than you interpret. I am saved--\nNot as you count salvation. Nay, I come\nTo one last refuge, finding all others vain.\nThe common joys, the peace of nescience,\nThe trust in some far Will, the hope to flame\nA beacon in the darkness of men's dreams:\nDriven forth from these, one citadel still lifts\nHeaven-fronting: there I stand, delivered, free,\nMaster again--that citadel, my soul.\nI have escaped from all the bondages;\nAnd now bow down to nothing. Joy or pain,\nDefeat or conquest, good or evil, now\nLure me no more. I will put hope in nothing\nSave in that whole strange glistening mortal life\nThat past me streams unto an end sublime\nWhereof you know not. All our ends are folly,\nAnd win not what they seek; yet there is joy\nIn seeking; and one end there is that shows\nA brighter glow. I am the watcher set\nUpon the heights. In my impassioned sight\nAll life is holy that strives unto life:\nDeath only is damnation. I will be\nMore happy than the happiest man, more strong\nThan is the strongest! I will climb on the neck\nOf this great monster, Life, and guide its course--\nFor I am master--toward that end I see\nHidden afar off.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                 You are sick and spent.\nI should not thus--\n\nFAUST\n\n                    Fear not; I do not wander.\nOr can you understand? No, no, you cannot.\nAnd yet some tenderness from days long past\nStirs in me with a hope for you once more--\nHear me for one last time.\n\n    [_Faust touches a bell. The butler enters._\n\nFAUST\n\n                           Bring to me, please,\nThat large black-covered manuscript I wrote\nLast night until the doctor took it from me.\nIt is among the papers on my desk.\n\n    [_The butler searches, finds the note-book and\n    places it on the table beside Faust. The butler\n    goes out. Faust sits turning over the pages of the\n    manuscript._\n\nFAUST\n\nHere to posterity I bequeath my soul--\nWorthless, perhaps, as heritage, but the all\nI have to give to them I love so much.\nThese pages shall cry kinship to the few\nWho, finding solace nowhere, yet shall find\nSolace in fierce destruction that assails\nThe folly and the madness of mankind.\n\n    (_He begins to read from the manuscript_)\n\nSatan recedes; but thou who seemest near--\nO unborn man, whose soul is of my soul,\nWhose glory is of my glory--all my love\nFloods out like light from the down-going sun\nToward thee, the nursling of a lofty line.\nThou art my faith--man the divine to come--\nMan whom I loathe for that which he is not--\nMan, even now half divine because of all\nThat shall spring from him in the days to be.\nThou, too, shalt fight with Satan, as I fought,\nYea, in eternal battles till the end.\nThou shalt go with him past the lure of lust,\nThe lure of power, the lure of that great sleep\nNirvana; past the yet more luring sleep\nWhere dreams assuage the soul to be a dream.\nThou shalt go with him, yet apart from him\nAnd all his works. He has no part in thee.\nHe is the chaos seething at earth's core--\nRemnant of times when out of chaos sprang\nLife's upward impulse. He is the darkness spread\nEre yet was light--the matter ere was form--\nThe vast inertia that on motion's heels\nClings viper-like. Of life and form and growth\nHe is negator; and his ceaseless joy\nIs to impede and drag to chaos back\nThe shoot that toward the light triumphant springs.\n\nBut vain his victories, though he lingers yet\nWith slowly narrowing frontiers. Past his will,\nSlowly the sons of light transcend, remould\nTheir day and destiny; slowly there is born\nOrder from chaos, flowers from formless mud,\nLight from the darkness, Faust's from Satan's soul.\n\nWith laughing and with wonder and with triumph\nI take that life and clasp it to my breast--\nI, part of all, and all a part of me--\nStreaming a river flashing in the sun.\nI am drunk with the glory of that which tramps me down\nAnd passes and transcends me--and is mine!\n\nI, one with thee, O child of Flame, behold\nThy harvest--when the passion of the years\nTurns earthward, and in mastered order sets\nThe house that is our dwelling. And therein,\nIn the gold light of summer afternoons,\nWith thee I too, careless and laughing, play\nMid dreams and wonders that our will has made--\nBathe in the beauty that our eyes have poured\nUpon the hills--and drink in thirsty draughts\nThe happiness we have rained upon the earth.\n\nI see, with ultimate unshaken vision!\nI see the earthly paradise; I see\nMen winged with wonder on the future throne\nUp infinite vistas where life's feet shall climb.\nOut of the dust, out of the plant and worm,\nOut of ourselves about whose feet still clings\nThe reptile-slime of our creation--lo!\nOur children's children rise; and all my love\nDraws toward them and the light upon their brows.\nThis is my faith; this is my happiness;\nThis is my hope of heaven; this is my God.\n\nBRANDER\n\nThe eternal God in heaven forgive you this!\n\nFAUST\n\nThe Devil I can foil, but not my friends!\nStrange allies to his cause! Well, dusk was long\nMy portion; now all gathering storms of hate\nAre less than naught to me. Six months ago,\nWhen here I stood that memorable night,\nMy gloom was starless; now one fiery star\nPierces it. And this broken frame of mine\nCannot annul that much of victory--\nThe solace born of passion to destroy\nThat shall survive me if indeed I die.\nAlone my life was lived; if now I go,\nIt is alone into a quiet grave\nAbove whose mound the fairer future days\nShall pass, and I not know them. Yet my night\nTakes foregleam from the vision of that dawn\nAnd I am solaced. And I leave my solace\nAs heritage to the ever widening few\nWho after me shall triumph more than I\nIn dawns of flaming.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                     O my friend, my friend,\nI would my tongue could cry as my heart cries--\nTurn back from darkness before the hour has struck!\nEven yet may mercy fold you. God is great\nAnd tender; and perhaps His love may clasp\nEven your aloofness, if at last your heart\nCalls in repentance to Him. O Faust, Faust,\nSink your vain pride of spirit--kneel to Him--\nBeseech His mercy ere it is too late!\n\nFAUST\n\nI am no melancholy death-bed scene\nTo claim your tears, dear Brander. Doubtless days\nOf infinite scope lie yet before me, since\nNo oracle has foretold that I shall die.\nBut if I die, then go I singing down,\nNot praying or repentant, to my grave.\nI would smite again the altar! I would smite\nThe hearts bowed before it; all the world\nAnd the Beyond-world would I rend, having seen\nSerpents in their secret places.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                                 Has no breath\nOf heavenly love touched this corrosive core\nOf hell-fire in you?\n\nFAUST\n\n                     There is none whose power\nIs half so mighty.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                   Through last night's long hours,\nPoor Midge, alone and comfortless, wept out\nHer heart, believing all that you had said.\nAnd when I spoke to her, she cried: \"Go, go!\nI am lost where none can help me; all my dreams\nShudder and perish, even as he has perished;\nYet they shall live again--but he will die!\" ...\nThus darkness falls from you upon men's hearts.\nI know not if God's deep forgiving love\nTo such as you is granted....\n\nFAUST\n\n                                   Midge could tell\nA truer tale. Her eyes were full of light\nAnd wonder as she heard me.\n\nBRANDER\n\n                            And she now\nWeeps comfortless!\n\nFAUST\n\n                   And shall I then regret?\nIs her soul yours, that you appraise and know?\nLife stirs in her: and like the agonies\nOf all life's birth, it shakes her: yet one day\nShe shall rise strong, sister to mighty winds,\nA new and holy wonder in her eyes.\nTell her from me that I have not forgotten\nMy promise in the church that I would come.\nBut if I come not, let her come to me!--\nLet her come with me on my luminous road.\n\nBRANDER\n\nPity her, and the hosts that with her stand\nShelterless from the blasts of your wild hate.\n\nFAUST\n\nWho loves must hate, who hates must burn with love....\nI hate the world; but like the breath of life,\nSustaining me even yet a little while,\nIs my surpassing love for its great hopes.\nAye, in the hour when I knew myself alone,\nMy hate cried: Smite!--because of thy great love\nFor one irradiant form that is to be.\nNow is my hate a lamp of tenderness--\nNow I destroy because I love beyond--\nI build, I triumph with bright domes that rise\nIn laughing loveliness into the morning!\n\nBRANDER\n\nI love you and I pity you--and I go.\n\nFAUST\n\nWe shall not meet again.\n\n    [_Brander goes out._\n\nFAUST\n\n                         He will go down\nNot singing, no, not singing!...\n\n    (_He once more takes up the manuscript, and turns\n    to the last pages_)\n\nAnd now, when from my shoulders like a load\nBegins to slip the weariness of life,\nAnd a new vigor fills me--now it seems\nThat death is hovering close. O Grisly One,\nWhom once I thought a not unwelcome guest\nTo my cold troubled house, I am not glad\nTo hear thy steps without. For in my halls\nLights kindle, and the music sobs and sings\nIn ecstasy of other guests than thee....\n\n    (_He takes up his pen and turns to the end of the\n    manuscript, as if to write_)\n\nCan this poor strength suffice me to complete\nThese final words? Nay, better to leave unsaid\nThe few last lines my vanity desires\nTo tell and justify my end and fall\nLike flourish of bright trumpets. Let them sleep\nUnuttered; for the burden of my song\nIs voiced already in these labored leaves;\nAnd it is well, unfinished and unclosed\nShould stop this record, whose concluding words\nOf fairer hope, of sheerer miracle,\nSome greater hand than mine shall some day write\nAnd seal the chronicle--nay, never seal it!\n\n    [_The butler enters._\n\nBUTLER\n\nThere is a man waiting to see you, sir.\n\nFAUST\n\nLet him come in.\n\nBUTLER\n\n                 I beg your pardon, sir--\nCan I do nothing for you?\n\nFAUST\n\n                          Thank you, nothing.\n\n    [_The butler goes out again, Satan enters. He is\n    dressed in a long black cloak of foreign cut; for\n    the first time, he has the look of sinister majesty\n    appropriate to the Prince of Hell._\n\nSATAN\n\nMaster, your slave is here!\n\nFAUST\n\n                            This fooling still?\n\nSATAN\n\nWhat little service would my conqueror wish?\n\nFAUST\n\nPeace from your childish talk. The game is done.\nQuite well you knew that, came I victor forth,\nI would not, for all treasure in the world,\nHave such an one as servant, who can serve\nNo end that I desire.\n\nSATAN\n\n                      Aha! At last\nLight penetrates that cobwebbed cranium,\nAnd I can laugh in public! All these months,\nI several times have come perilously near\nBursting with mirth at the rare spectacle.\n\nFAUST\n\nPray you, laugh freely.\n\nSATAN\n\n                        Nay, my mirth is spent.\nMy heart is moved even toward an enemy,\nWhen on his head defeat its torrent pours.\nI offer you my sympathy.\n\nFAUST\n\n                         My thanks\nAre in appropriate measure tendered you.\n\nSATAN\n\nDistrust me not, for lo, the game is done--\nThere are no battles more, no testings more\nTo set between us. From the heart of life\nHave forces risen--aye, from the people's breast!--\nTo seal the measure of defeat; and now\nWhy shall we quarrel further?\n\nFAUST\n\n                              Why, indeed?\n\nSATAN\n\nI hear that you are working on a book\nRecounting your adventures with the Devil.\nI hope 'tis finished: it had better be!\nYou will not write large libraries, my friend,\nIn what of life remains to you.\n\nFAUST\n\n                                 It is\nCompleted wholly.\n\nSATAN\n\n                  May I look at it?\n\nFAUST\n\nYou may not.\n\nSATAN\n\n             Ah, 'tis a surprise for me!\n\nFAUST\n\nPossibly.\n\nSATAN\n\n          Well, you work late into dusk.\nDusk falls about you; soon the night will come,\nAnd silence.... Has an oracle in your heart\nWhispered the tidings of that night? Or have\nThe pages of the prophets told to you\nWhat waits within that darkness?\n\nFAUST\n\n                                 There waits sleep.\nBut I have lived, and do not fear life's last\nInevitable word.\n\nSATAN\n\n                 My lips are sealed,\nThough I would fain prepare you for that first\nAnd awful moment when, beyond death's gates,\nYou see and know--for now you do not know--\nWhat there awaits you. You have seen the grave;\nYou know the dissolution and decay\nThat folds the body as it mouldering lies\nAfter the racking of those final hours\nWhere soul and body part. But have you guessed\nThat--as the body rots without the soul--\nSo the soul crumbles in a vile decay\nYou cannot picture, when the body dies?\nThen falls the spirit limb from reeking limb.\nAn agony beyond all mortal thought\nShakes every atom of the spiritual frame--\nThe throes of dissolution. Death, indeed,\nAll men can bear; but this last spiritual death,\nThis torture of the disembodied soul\nTo force dissolving--ah, prepare yourself!\nIt shall appall you!\n\nFAUST\n\n                      If it comes, it comes.\n\nSATAN\n\nWe have been foes; but now I speak as friend.\nThis shall not come to you! 'Tis in my power\nTo save you from this uttermost horror's grasp.\nFor I have gift of perfect dreamless sleep;\nAnd those to whom I give shall after death\nSlumber unconscious while the awful change\nAttacks them; and oblivion shall be theirs\nUnbroken stretching from the final hour.\n\nFAUST\n\nThat were a boon not easily despised.\n\nSATAN\n\nIt shall be yours! My crushed and broken foe\nShall never at my hand lack final rest\nWhere nightmares cannot come. As honest foes\nWe shall be quit. And for this priceless gift\nI ask but that you give me, as remembrance,\nThat book which you have wrought concerning me.\n\nFAUST\n\nWhy still so eager?\n\nSATAN\n\n                    Eager? I am not.\n\nFAUST\n\nSatan, my soul still sees, though death has drawn\nIts curtains round my body. You have sought\nWith long endeavor to enslave my will\nTo nothingness; now would you doom to dark\nMy sublimated soul, my written word,\nMy force immortal....\n\n    (_He takes up the pen_)\n\n                      This, Satan, is your answer--\n\n    (_He writes on the last sheet of the manuscript_)\n\n\"With this last word I close my testament:\n'Man, work thy will, and God shall come of thee.'\"\n\nSATAN\n\nPoor thwarted fool, who would not take my lures,\nBeing far too wise! Yet dustward now he turns,\nAnd where Faust stood shall nothingness survive!\n\nFAUST\n\nApproach me not: I have grown sanctified.\nLoathing the night and dreaming of the dawn,\nI claim some kinship with the Eternal Power\nWhich in the dust, the daisy and the star\nMoves onward in its self-ordained sway--\nLife everlasting. Through my veins it sweeps,\nBearing me onward; and as I am borne,\nI onward urge, till my short day be done\nAnd I fall spent; and over me the wave\nSweeps on its way immortal; and my soul\nPartakes of that lost immortality.\n\nSATAN\n\nDreamer, whose dreams shall soon be choked with dust!\n\nFAUST (_slowly rising_)\n\nI am that dreamer to whose mounting dreams\nNo bounds are set, no region which my will\nMay not reach out toward. And I will create--\nI, and the souls that after me shall come--\nBy passion of desire a pillar of flame\nAbove the wastes of life. If no God be,\nI will from my deep soul create a God\nInto the universe to fight for me!\n\n    (_He sinks back_)\n\nSATAN\n\nHow strong a master! Why not slay me now?\nPut forth your strength, and try how great it be!\n\nFAUST\n\nThough dying, I am master. But you still\nAre jester, even at death-beds--knowing well\nI have no power to slay you. You retreat\nBut perish not; the sphere of your domain\nContracts, but it endures immortally.\nHave done with jesting: look me in the eyes!\nAcknowledge me, and all high heritors\nWho shall succeed me, your eternal foe,\nYour eternal victor in half-victories--\nBut never your destroyer to the last.\n\nSATAN\n\nI thank all prophets for their prophecy!\nBut I shall still remain?...\n\nFAUST\n\n                            You shall remain....\n\nSATAN\n\nI shall remain!...\n\n    [_Faust and Satan sit silent, watching each other\n    steadily. Faust closes his eyes, then suddenly\n    raises himself in his chair._\n\nFAUST\n\n                   Ah, what a ghastly dream!\nGhastly, for all its cold and lofty state.\nNay, what have I to do with yearning thoughts\nOf immortality? I am young with life!\nI shall not die! Hope and the eager years\nOf labor rise before me as I press\nClear of these shadows. I have dreamed dark dreams--\nOne very dark of late--but now my blood\nResurges in a not less passionate fire\nThan when, less wise, I stretched my hands to life,\nAnd all my hopes were winged. But that is past;\nAnd dreams are past: the day of deed is come.\nAye, in the cities, on the hills of the world,\nI shall uplift the banner of high wars--\nI shall make mock of this strange dizziness--\nI shall live--and Death retreats from me afraid!\n\nSATAN\n\nWhat! Then I'll do his office!\n\nFAUST\n\n                               Spare your pains\nThe tide of strength recedes, swift as it came....\nOldham! I cannot die! I cannot die!...\nAnd I am dying....\n\n    [_Faust sinks back with closed eyes. The door opens\n    softly and the butler enters, followed by Midge who\n    carries an armful of flowers. She looks around the\n    room, bewildered; then crosses quickly to Faust's\n    chair._\n\nSATAN\n\n                     Madam, you come too late.\n\n    [_Faust opens his eyes--and, lifting the\n    manuscript, with feeble hand holds it out to her._\n\nFAUST\n\nNo, not too late.... Touch me across the dusk--\n\n    [_Midge, shaken and faltering, clasps the book to\n    her. Doubtfully she touches his shoulder. Faust,\n    slightly smiling, closes his eyes._\n\n                                CURTAIN","title":"Mr. Faust","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":21427}