I image of the Godhead, who but now For whom the reign of light had just begun, "Likeness to thee my clay may not inherit; I felt so little, yet so great, You hurl'd me back, you bad me fall, Plumb down to man's uncertain state. Who tells me what I should eschew? What impulse I may best obey? Whether we suffer, or we do, We clog existence on its way. "What though when fancy's daring wing was young, Forth into boundless space at once it sprung; A shorter course 'tis now content to run, Care in the deep heart builds its nest, And fly imagined ill, as though our path it cross'd. "I am not like the gods. Know that I must, Most like the worm, slow wallowing through the dust, Whom man's destroying foot, if there it strays, "Are they not dust, the cases there? The shelves, and all the volumed pile they bear? That man, in every clime and age, Has rack'd his heart and brain : That here and there a luckier wight was seen, Seldom or never to be seen again. Skull of the nameless dead, why grinn'st thou, say? Was mad, like mine, for what it fail'd to win, Nor suffers man by aid like yours to find What she refuses to the powers of mind, And deep reflection's flow, and study's tranquil course I have no portion in thee, useless heap Of lumber, aiding once my father's toil: Parchments and rolls continue still your sleep, Grimed by yon cresset's ever-fuming oil. Better to waste the substance of my sire, Than thus encircled by it to expire. All we possess, and use not on the road, Adds to the burden we must bear, Enjoyment alleviates our share, And, by consuming, lightens still the load." "He then intends to poison himself, and is arrested, in the act of setting the cup to his lips, by the sound of the church-bells and the Easter Hymn. The sentiments which this incident recalls are tenderly expressed, but not in that impassioned and pathetic strain which the occasion might have been expected to inspire." FAUST. Why seek ye here, ye tones of Heaven, On softer hearts your soothing influence try; I could be happy, though deceived. I dare not lift my thoughts towards the spheres, From whence that heavenly sound salutes my ears; And yet that anthem's long-remember'd strain Revives the scenes of sinless youth again, When, on the stillness of the sabbath-day, Heaven in that peal seem'd pouring from above, While saints might wish with joy like mine to pray. Impell'd me from the haunts of man ; I form'd myself a new creation, While tears of Christian fervour ran. "A very silly namby-pamby scene succeeds between worthy artizans and others of their class,— going, as the Cockneys call it, a holiday-making. Faust and Wagner, and then an old peasant, are introduced. The dialogue between them hath oc casional touches of poetry and of natural feeling, but still it is not of a very high order. The description of the season is not better than the spring has been described a thousand times; but the kindly gratitude of the peasant, for the assistance which Faust and his father had given to the people by their skill during a pestilence, is pleasing and natural; and there is prodigious effect in Faust's account of the result of his father's alchemy. I suspect Lord Francis did not clearly understand the passage in the original; for he has so translated it as to make it almost seem as if Faust and his father exasperated the plague by their medicines,-whereas Faust is alluding to the deleterious effects of the gold which his father had alchemically made." FAUST. "A little onward-far as yonder stone- With tears, and sighs, and prayers as vague, And stay the ravage of the plague. And, after many a crabb'd receipt, And mingled contraries in one. Who married lilies in their bath of gold, With fire then vex'd them from one bridal bed Into another, thus he made them wed. Upon her throne of glass was seen, Our mixtures did their work more sure "An account of the feeling of his insatiable curiosity, which soon follows, is full of beautiful and lofty poetry. It is one of the gems of the book." FAUST. "Happy in error's sea who finds the land, Or o'er delusion's waves his limbs can buoy ; And what we know, we know not to employ. And yields to death but to recruit his fires; To track the monarch, as his orb retires. |