SATAN
Well, you work late into dusk.
Dusk falls about you; soon the night will come,
And silence.... Has an oracle in your heart
Whispered the tidings of that night? Or have
The pages of the prophets told to you
What waits within that darkness?
FAUST
There waits sleep.
But I have lived, and do not fear life's last
Inevitable word.
SATAN
My lips are sealed,
Though I would fain prepare you for that first
And awful moment when, beyond death's gates,
You see and know—for now you do not know—
What there awaits you. You have seen the grave;
You know the dissolution and decay
That folds the body as it mouldering lies
After the racking of those final hours
Where soul and body part. But have you guessed
That—as the body rots without the soul—
So the soul crumbles in a vile decay
You cannot picture, when the body dies?
Then falls the spirit limb from reeking limb.
An agony beyond all mortal thought
Shakes every atom of the spiritual frame—
The throes of dissolution. Death, indeed,
All men can bear; but this last spiritual death,
This torture of the disembodied soul
To force dissolving—ah, prepare yourself!
It shall appall you!
FAUST
If it comes, it comes.
SATAN
We have been foes; but now I speak as friend.
This shall not come to you! 'Tis in my power
To save you from this uttermost horror's grasp.
For I have gift of perfect dreamless sleep;
And those to whom I give shall after death
Slumber unconscious while the awful change
Attacks them; and oblivion shall be theirs
Unbroken stretching from the final hour.