Must seize the rock's old ribs and hold on
stoutly!
Faust, a Tragedy by Goethe
We have reached a middle summit,
Whence one stares to see how shines
Mammon in the mountain-mines.
_Faust_. How strangely through the dim recesses
A dreary dawning seems to glow!
And even down the deep abysses
Its melancholy quiverings throw!
Here smoke is boiling, mist exhaling;
Here from a vapory veil it gleams,
Then, a fine thread of light, goes trailing,
Then gushes up in fiery streams.
The valley, here, you see it follow,
One mighty flood, with hundred rills,
And here, pent up in some deep hollow,
It breaks on all sides down the hills.
Here, spark-showers, darting up before us,
Like golden sand-clouds rise and fall.
But yonder see how blazes o'er us,
All up and down, the rocky wall!
_Mephistopheles_. Has not Sir Mammon gloriously lighted
His palace for this festive night?
Count thyself lucky for the sight:
I catch e'en now a glimpse of noisy guests invited.
_Faust_. How the mad tempest[34] sweeps the air!
On cheek and neck the wind-gusts how they flout me.
_Mephistopheles_.
Must seize the rock's old ribs and hold on stoutly!
Else will they hurl thee down the dark abysses there.
A mist-rain thickens the gloom.
Hark, how the forests crash and boom!
Out fly the owls in dread and wonder;
Splitting their columns asunder,
Hear it, the evergreen palaces shaking!
Boughs are twisting and breaking!
Of stems what a grinding and moaning!
Of roots what a creaking and groaning!
In frightful confusion, headlong tumbling,
They fall, with a sound of thunder rumbling,
And, through the wreck-piled ravines and abysses,
The tempest howls and hisses.
Hearst thou voices high up o'er us?
Close around us--far before us?
Through the mountain, all along,
Swells a torrent of magic song.
_Witches_ [_in chorus_]. The witches go to the Brocken's top,
The stubble is yellow, and green the crop.
They gather there at the well-known call,
Sir Urian[85] sits at the head of all.
Then on we go o'er stone and stock:
The witch, she--and--the buck.
