Ariel. If the spirit gave, indeed,
If nature gave you, pinions,
Follow up my airy lead
To the rose-dominions!
Orchestra [pianissimo]. Gauzy mist and fleecy cloud
Sun and wind have banished.
Foliage rustles, reeds pipe loud,
All the show has vanished.
DREARY DAY.[46]
Field.
FAUST. MEPHISTOPHELES.
Faust. In wretchedness! In despair! Long hunted up and down the earth, a miserable fugitive, and caught at last! Locked up as a malefactor in prison, to converse with horrible torments—the sweet, unhappy creature! Even to this pass! even to this!—Treacherous, worthless spirit, and this thou hast hidden from me!—Stand up here—stand up! Roll thy devilish eyes round grimly in thy head! Stand and defy me with thy intolerable presence! Imprisoned! In irretrievable misery! Given over to evil spirits and to the judgment of unfeeling humanity, and me meanwhile thou lullest in insipid dissipations, concealest from me her growing anguish, and leavest her without help to perish!
Mephistopheles. She is not the first!
Faust. Dog! abominable monster! Change him, thou Infinite Spirit! change the worm back into his canine form, as he was often pleased in the night to trot before me, to roll before the feet of the harmless wanderer, and, when he fell, to hang on his shoulders. Change him again into his favorite shape, that he may crawl before me on his belly in the sand, and that I may tread him under foot, the reprobate!—Not the first! Misery! Misery! inconceivable by any human soul! that more than one creature ever sank into the depth of this wretchedness, that the first in its writhing death-agony did not atone for the guilt of all the rest before the eyes of the eternally Forgiving! My very marrow and life are consumed by the misery of this single one; thou grinnest away composedly at the fate of thousands!
Mephistopheles. Here we are again at our wits' ends already, where the thread of sense, with you mortals, snaps short. Why make a partnership with us, if thou canst not carry it through? Wilt fly, and art not proof against dizziness? Did we thrust ourselves on thee, or thou on us?
Faust. Gnash not so thy greedy teeth against me! It disgusts me!—Great and glorious spirit, thou that deignedst to appear to me, who knowest my heart and soul, why yoke me to this shame-fellow, who feeds on mischief and feasts on ruin?