XXI
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Clarke, Harry, and Taylor, Bayard
WITCHES (chorus)
The way is wide, the way is long: See, what a wild and crazy throng! The broom it scratches, the fork it thrusts, The child is stifled, the mother bursts.
WIZARDS (semichorus)
As doth the snail in shell, we crawl: Before us go the women all. When towards the Devil’s House we tread, Woman’s a thousand steps ahead. OTHER SEMICHORUS We do not measure with such care: Woman in thousand steps is theft. But howsoe’er she hasten may, Man in one leap has cleared the way.
VOICE (from above)
Come on, come on, from Rocky Lake!
VOICE (from below)
Aloft we’d fain ourselves betake. We’ve washed, and are bright as ever you will, Yet we’re eternally sterile still.
BOTH CHORUSES
The wind is hushed, the star shoots by. The dreary moon forsakes the sky; The magic notes, like spark on spark, Drizzle, whistling through the dark.
VOICE (from below)
Halt, there! Ho, there!
VOICE (from above)
Who calls from the rocky cleft below there?
VOICE (below)
Take me, too! take me, too! I’m climbing now three hundred years, And yet the summit cannot see: Among my equals I would be.
BOTH CHORUSES
Bears the broom and bears the stock, Bears the fork and bears the buck: Who cannot raise himself to-night Is evermore a ruined wight.
HALF-WITCH (below)
So long I stumble, ill bestead, And the others are now so far ahead! At home I’ve neither rest nor cheer, And yet I cannot gain them here.
CHORUS OF WITCHES
To cheer the witch will salve avail; A rag will answer for a sail; Each trough a goodly ship supplies; He ne’er will fly, who now not flies.
BOTH CHORUSES
When round the summit whirls our flight, Then lower, and on the ground alight; And far and wide the heather press With witchhood’s swarms of wantonness!
(They settle down.)
MEPHISTOPHELES
They crowd and push, they roar and clatter! They whirl and whistle, pull and chatter! They shine, and spirt, and stink, and burn! The true witch-element we learn. Keep close! or we are parted, in our turn, Where art thou?
FAUST (in the distance)
Here!
MEPHISTOPHELES
What! whirled so far astray?
Then house-right I must use, and clear the way. Make room! Squire Voland comes! Room, gentle rabble, room!
Here, Doctor, hold to me: in one jump we’ll resume An easier space, and from the crowd be free: It’s too much, even for the like of me. Yonder, with special light, there’s something shining clearer Within those bushes; I’ve a mind to see. Come on! we’ll slip a little nearer.
FAUST
Spirit of Contradiction! On! I’ll follow straight. ’Tis planned most wisely, if I judge aright: We climb the Brocken’s top in the Walpurgis-Night, That arbitrarily, here, ourselves we isolate.
MEPHISTOPHELES
But see, what motley flames among the heather! There is a lively club together: In smaller circles one is not alone.
FAUST
Better the summit, I must own: There fire and whirling smoke I see. They seek the Evil One in wild confusion: Many enigmas there might find solution.
MEPHISTOPHELES