... I would go
Out to some golden sun-lighted land
Of silence.
That is poetical; it is cosmic in its feeling. Looking at a bust of Washington, he enviously—no, compassionately—remarks,
... Not a star
In all the vaults of heaven could trouble you
With whisperings of more transcendent goals.
At this juncture Satan appears, gains recognition by recalling an incident involving Faust with a blackmailing woman in a college during his youth, and thereafter tempts him into empty, unsatisfying paradises. In his wandering and winding pilgrimage through the world Faust makes the footprints that we recognize as those of our own humanity, seeking its way—somewhither. He is offered but rejects peace, happiness, salvation and all the rest of their related consolations, knowing that none of them could satisfy his restless heart. To his uncomprehending friends he is lost, and Satan himself, to whom in such circumstances he is obviously resigned by society, fails to claim him. But Midge, the heroine, knew him; she could touch him across the dusk, which was his kind of immortality. And so Faust, with a vague consciousness of his own godhood, a sense of his own supremacy, an unshakable faith in one thing—himself—passed from the earthly freedom of his will into the great release.
It is altogether too early in the morning of humanity to expect to see this play or one like it on the stage. That it should be written by a young American and published by a young Englishman is enough to satisfy those who would enjoy its presentation, and those to whom it would be Greek or “unpleasant,” whether they saw it or read it, must wait for its truth through their children—across the dusk!