I stood beside his bed of dying.
’Twas something better than manure,—
Half-rotten straw: and yet, he died a Christian, sure,
And found that heavier scores to his account were lying.
He cried: “I find my conduct wholly hateful!
To leave my wife, my trade, in manner so ungrateful!
Ah, the remembrance makes me die!
Would of my wrong to her I might be shriven!”
MARTHA (weeping)
The dear, good man! Long since was he forgiven.
MEPHISTOPHELES
“Yet she, God knows! was more to blame than I.”
MARTHA
He lied! What! On the brink of death he slandered?
MEPHISTOPHELES
In the last throes his senses wandered,
If I such things but half can judge.
He said: “I had no time for play, for gaping freedom:
First children, and then work for bread to feed ’em,—
For bread, in the widest sense, to drudge,
And could not even eat my share in peace and quiet!”
MARTHA