第 二十二 章 · OBERON AND TITANIA’S GOLDEN WEDDING

an infuriate glamouring song!

WITCHES (_in chorus_)

The witches ride to the Brocken’s top,

The stubble is yellow, and green the crop.

There gathers the crowd for carnival:

Sir Urian sits over all.

And so they go over stone and stock;

The witch she——s, and——s the buck.

A VOICE

Alone, old Baubo’s coming now;

She rides upon a farrow-sow.

CHORUS

Then honor to whom the honor is due!

Dame Baubo first, to lead the crew!

A tough old sow and the mother thereon,

Then follow the witches, every one.

A VOICE

Which way com’st thou hither?

VOICE

O’er the Ilsen-stone.

I peeped at the owl in her nest alone:

How she stared and glared!

VOICE

Betake thee to Hell!

Why so fast and so fell?

VOICE

She has scored and has flayed me:

See the wounds she has made me!

WITCHES (_chorus_)

The way is wide, the way is long:

See, what a wild and crazy throng!

The broom it scratches, the fork it thrusts,

The child is stifled, the mother bursts.

WIZARDS (_semichorus_)

As doth the snail in shell, we crawl:

Before us go the women all.

When towards the Devil’s House we tread,

Woman’s a thousand steps ahead.

OTHER SEMICHORUS

We do not measure with such care:

Woman in thousand steps is theft.

But howsoe’er she hasten may,

Man in one leap has cleared the way.

VOICE (_from above_)

Come on, come on, from Rocky Lake!

VOICE (_from below_)

Aloft we’d fain ourselves betake.

We’ve washed, and are bright as ever you will,

Yet we’re eternally sterile still.

BOTH CHORUSES

The wind is hushed, the star shoots by.

The dreary moon forsakes the sky;

The magic notes, like spark on spark,

Drizzle, whistling through the dark.

VOICE (_from below_)

Halt, there! Ho, there!

VOICE (_from above_)

Who calls from the rocky cleft below there?

VOICE (_below_)

Take me, too! take me, too!

I’m climbing now three hundred years,

And yet the summit cannot see:

Among my equals I would be.

BOTH CHORUSES

Bears the broom and bears the stock,

Bears the fork and bears the buck:

Who cannot raise himself to-night

Is evermore a ruined wight.

HALF-WITCH (_below_)

So long I stumble, ill bestead,

And the others are now so far ahead!

At home I’ve neither rest nor cheer,

And yet I cannot gain them here.

CHORUS OF WITCHES

To cheer the witch will salve avail;

A rag will answer for a sail;

Each trough a goodly ship supplies;

He ne’er will fly, who now not flies.

BOTH CHORUSES

When round the summit whirls our flight,

Then lower, and on the ground alight;

And far and wide the heather press

With witchhood’s swarms of wantonness!

(_They settle down_.)

MEPHISTOPHELES

They crowd and push, they roar and clatter!

They whirl and whistle, pull and chatter!

They shine, and spirt, and stink, and burn!

The true witch-element we learn.

Keep close! or we are parted, in our turn,

Where art thou?

FAUST (_in the distance_)

Here!

MEPHISTOPHELES

What! whirled so far astray?

Then house-right I must use, and clear the way.

Make room! Squire Voland comes! Room, gentle rabble,

room!

Here, Doctor, hold to me: in one jump we’ll resume

An easier space, and from the crowd be free:

It’s too much, even for the like of me.

Yonder, with special light, there’s something shining clearer

Within those bushes; I’ve a mind to see.

Come on! we’ll slip a little nearer.

FAUST

Spirit of Contradiction! On! I’ll follow straight.

’Tis planned most wisely, if I judge aright:

We climb the Brocken’s top in the Walpurgis-Night,

That arbitrarily, here, ourselves we isolate.

MEPHISTOPHELES

But see, what motley flames among the heather!

There is a lively club together:

In smaller circles one is not alone.

FAUST

Better the summit, I must own:

There fire and whirling smoke I see.

They seek the Evil One in wild confusion:

Many enigmas there might find solution.

MEPHISTOPHELES

But there enigmas also knotted be.

Leave to the multitude their riot!

Here will we house ourselves in quiet.

It is an old, transmitted trade,

That in the greater world the little worlds are made.

I see stark-nude young witches congregate,

And old ones, veiled and hidden shrewdly:

On my account be kind, nor treat them rudely!

The trouble’s small, the fun is great.

I hear the noise of instruments attuning,—

Vile din! yet one must learn to bear the crooning.

Come, come along! It _must_ be, I declare!

I’ll go ahead and introduce thee there,

Thine obligation newly earning.

That is no little space: what say’st thou, friend?

Look yonder! thou canst scarcely see the end:

A hundred fires along the ranks are burning.

They dance, they chat, they cook, they drink, they court:

Now where, just tell me, is there better sport?

FAUST

Wilt thou, to introduce us to the revel,

Assume the part of wizard or of devil?

MEPHISTOPHELES

I’m mostly used, ’tis true, to go incognito,

But on a gala-day one may his orders show.

The Garter does not deck my suit,

But honored and at home is here the cloven foot.

Perceiv’st thou yonder snail? It cometh, slow and steady;

So delicately its feelers pry,

That it hath scented me already:

I cannot here disguise me, if I try.

But come! we’ll go from this fire to a newer:

I am the go-between, and thou the wooer.

(_To some, who are sitting around dying embers_:)

Old gentlemen, why at the outskirts? Enter!

I’d praise you if I found you snugly in the centre,

With youth and revel round you like a zone:

You each, at home, are quite enough alone.

GENERAL

Say, who would put his trust in nations,

Howe’er for them one may have worked and planned?

For with the people, as with women,

Youth always has the upper hand.

MINISTER

They’re now too far from what is just and sage.

I praise the old ones, not unduly:

When we were all-in-all, then, truly,

_Then_ was the real golden age.

PARVENU

We also were not stupid, either,

And what we should not, often did;

But now all things have from their bases slid,

Just as we meant to hold them fast together.

AUTHOR

Who, now, a work of moderate sense will read?

Such works are held as antiquate and mossy;

And as regards the younger folk, indeed,

They never yet have been so pert and saucy.

MEPHISTOPHELES

(_who all at once appears very old_)

I feel that men are ripe for Judgment-Day,

Now for the last time I’ve the witches’-hill ascended:

Since to the lees _my_ cask is drained away,

The world’s, as well, must soon be ended.

HUCKSTER-WITCH

Ye gentlemen, don’t pass me thus!

Let not the chance neglected be!

Behold my wares attentively:

The stock is rare and various.

And yet, there’s nothing I’ve collected—

No shop, on earth, like this you’ll find!—

Which has not, once, sore hurt inflicted

Upon the world, and on mankind.

No dagger’s here, that set not blood to flowing;

No cup, that hath not once, within a healthy frame

Poured speedy death, in poison glowing:

No gems, that have not brought a maid to shame;

No sword, but severed ties for the unwary,

Or from behind struck down the adversary.

MEPHISTOPHELES

Gossip! the times thou badly comprehendest:

What’s done has happed—what haps, is done!

’Twere better if for novelties thou sendest:

By such alone can we be won.

FAUST

Let me not lose myself in all this pother!

This is a fair, as never was another!

MEPHISTOPHELES

The whirlpool swirls to get above:

Thou’rt shoved thyself, imagining to shove.

FAUST

But who is that?

MEPHISTOPHELES

Note her especially,

Tis Lilith.

FAUST

Who?

MEPHISTOPHELES

Adam’s first wife is she.

Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,

The splendid sole adornment of her hair!

When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,

Not soon again she free

SCENE 23.