E. G.'s Reviews > Faust, Part 1

"Alas, I've studied Philosophy,
The Law and Physic and also,
More's the pity, Divinity
With ardent effort, through and through
And here I am, about as wise
Today, poor fool, as I ever was.
My title is Master, Doctor even
And up the hill and down again
Nearly ten years wherever I please
I've led my pupils by the nose --
And see what we can know is: naught.
When I knew this it seared my heart.
True, I know more than all the dimwits,
The doctors, masters, clerks and prelates.
I'm not tormented by doubt and scruple,
I'm not afraid of Hell and the Devil,
But all my joy has left me too,
I know that it's nothing good I know,
I know that what I teach won't mend
The minds and the manners of humankind.
I've neither goods nor gold and neither
Honour in the world nor any splendour.
A dog wouldn't live like this. So I
Have given myself to necromancy
To hear the mouths of ghosts disclose
In power some of their mysteries
And never again, in the sweat of my brow,
To speak of things I do not know
But see what in its innermost
Gathers the world and holds it fast,
Spy all the working and the seed,
The power -- and quit the wordy trade.

O full moonlight, would that this were
Your last sight of my torment here!
So many midnights I have watched
You wax as though my watching fetched
You hither to lift above me, chained
To print and script, oh my sad friend
Could I but walk the mountains, high
In your beloved light, could I
Hover at mountain caves with ghosts,
Weave in the meadows in your mists,
Slough off the dross of knowing and in
Your dew bathe myself well again.

Stuck in the dungeon am I still?
Airless, cursèd hole-in-the-wall
Where even the lovely daylight shines
Muddily through the painted panes!
Confined behind the mounds of tomes
That dust shrouds and the worms eat at;
From floor to ceiling by reams and reams
Of sooty papers hedged about;
And circled in by jars and boxes
And instruments jam-packing it,
Ancestral lumber cramming it,
That is your world! What a world it is!

And you still wonder why your heart
In panic clenches tight in you?
Why ills you cannot fathom thwart
The starts of any life in you?
Instead of living Nature here
That Man was made within by God
Round you in reek and moulder are
Beasts' skeletons and bones of the dead.

Escape! Into a wider land!
And this book of the secrets by
Nostradamus's own hand
Be all your guide and company!"