Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1230

MEPHISTOPHELES (stepping from behind a curtain. While he raises it and looks back, FAUST is seen, stretched upon an old-fashioned bed)

Lie there, ill-starred one! In love's chain,

Full hard to loose, he captive lies!

Not soon his senses will regain

Whom Helena doth paralyze.

(Looking round)

Above, around, on every side

I gaze, uninjured all remains:

Dimmer, methinks, appear the color'd panes,

The spiders' webs are multiplied,

Yellow the paper, and the ink is dry;

Yet in its place each thing I find;

And here the very pen doth lie,

Wherewith himself Faust to the Devil signed,

Yea, quite dried up, and deeper in the bore,

The drop of blood, I lured from him of yore—

O'erjoyed to own such specimen unique

Were he who objects rare is fain to seek—;

Here on its hook hangs still the old fur cloak,

Me it remindeth of that merry joke,

When to the boy I precepts gave, for truth,

Whereon, perchance, he's feeding now, as youth.

The wish comes over me, with thee allied,

Enveloped in thy worn and rugged folds,

Once more to swell with the professor's pride!

How quite infallible himself he holds;

This feeling to obtain your savants know;

The devil parted with it long ago.

[He shakes the fur cloak which he has taken down; crickets, moths, and chafers fly out.]