BRANDER
Faust!
FAUST
Lost is my way among eternal shadows.
Darkened is every light; and clouds are rolled
With blackening curtain over all the stars
Within my heaven. But I stand upright
Now to the end, no traitor to that dawn
I cannot image.
SATAN
FAUST
Begone,
Judas!...
Ah, Brander, would that I could yield
Myself to Him who has received your burdens!
But to me seems it as another sleep,
Like that Nirvana which I put aside
In other gardens of temptation. Sleep—
Sleep that should have no waking—happy sleep—
An anodyne for which my spirit yearns
But dare not take—a yielding to some Will,
Whose Will, we know not, nor do greatly care
So long it be not our will....
Thus may yield
The weary; I am weary, but not yet
To such last slumber. Thus may yield the base;
I am not base. Thus may those spirits yield
Who, poisoned by some madness in their blood,
Despise life's being; but not yet will I
So utterly despise it. Though in gulfs
Of yet unsounded ruin I should die
At the end miserably, I still shall seek
In life itself my refuge: not in God
That stands apart from life, on heights of peace.
All my desires, my visions, my dreams, my unrest,
My loathing and my longing will I clutch
And cry: "With all its bitterness on my head,
My Will be done, not Thy Will!"