Fear not; I do not wander.
Or can you understand? No, no, you cannot.
And yet some tenderness from days long past
Stirs in me with a hope for you once more—
Hear me for one last time.
[Faust touches a bell. The butler enters.
FAUST
Bring to me, please,
That large black-covered manuscript I wrote
Last night until the doctor took it from me.
It is among the papers on my desk.
[The butler searches, finds the note-book and places
it on the table beside Faust. The butler goes out.
Faust sits turning over the pages of the manuscript.
FAUST
Here to posterity I bequeath my soul—
Worthless, perhaps, as heritage, but the all
I have to give to them I love so much.
These pages shall cry kinship to the few
Who, finding solace nowhere, yet shall find
Solace in fierce destruction that assails
The folly and the madness of mankind.
(He begins to read from the manuscript)
Satan recedes; but thou who seemest near—
O unborn man, whose soul is of my soul,
Whose glory is of my glory—all my love
Floods out like light from the down-going sun
Toward thee, the nursling of a lofty line.
Thou art my faith—man the divine to come—
Man whom I loathe for that which he is not—
Man, even now half divine because of all
That shall spring from him in the days to be.
Thou, too, shalt fight with Satan, as I fought,
Yea, in eternal battles till the end.
Thou shalt go with him past the lure of lust,
The lure of power, the lure of that great sleep
Nirvana; past the yet more luring sleep
Where dreams assuage the soul to be a dream.
Thou shalt go with him, yet apart from him
And all his works. He has no part in thee.
He is the chaos seething at earth's core—
Remnant of times when out of chaos sprang
Life's upward impulse. He is the darkness spread
Ere yet was light—the matter ere was form—
The vast inertia that on motion's heels
Clings viper-like. Of life and form and growth
He is negator; and his ceaseless joy
Is to impede and drag to chaos back
The shoot that toward the light triumphant springs.
But vain his victories, though he lingers yet
With slowly narrowing frontiers. Past his will,
Slowly the sons of light transcend, remould
Their day and destiny; slowly there is born
Order from chaos, flowers from formless mud,
Light from the darkness, Faust's from Satan's soul.
With laughing and with wonder and with triumph
I take that life and clasp it to my breast—
I, part of all, and all a part of me—
Streaming a river flashing in the sun.
I am drunk with the glory of that which tramps me down
And passes and transcends me—and is mine!
I, one with thee, O child of Flame, behold
Thy harvest—when the passion of the years
Turns earthward, and in mastered order sets
The house that is our dwelling. And therein,
In the gold light of summer afternoons,
With thee I too, careless and laughing, play
Mid dreams and wonders that our will has made—
Bathe in the beauty that our eyes have poured
Upon the hills—and drink in thirsty draughts
The happiness we have rained upon the earth.
I see, with ultimate unshaken vision!
I see the earthly paradise; I see
Men winged with wonder on the future throne
Up infinite vistas where life's feet shall climb.
Out of the dust, out of the plant and worm,
Out of ourselves about whose feet still clings
The reptile-slime of our creation—lo!
Our children's children rise; and all my love
Draws toward them and the light upon their brows.
This is my faith; this is my happiness;
This is my hope of heaven; this is my God.