They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep, I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away.
Just as the prince, in his hunger for rest, has asserted
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep,
Lucifer appears, in his accustomed dress as a traveling physician, and accompanied by his usual sign, a flash of lightning. He taunts and cajoles his victim into drinking what he is pleased to call his water of life. The immediate effect of this Satanic liquid is like that which the cordial of the foul hag communicates to the Faust of Goethe: