XX
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Clarke, Harry, and Taylor, Bayard
CATHEDRAL
SERVICE, ORGAN and ANTHEM.
(MARGARET among much people: the EVIL SPIRIT behind MARGARET.)
EVIL SPIRIT
HOW otherwise was it, Margaret, When thou, still innocent, Here to the altar cam’st, And from the worn and fingered book Thy prayers didst prattle, Half sport of childhood, Half God within thee! Margaret! Where tends thy thought? Within thy bosom What hidden crime? Pray’st thou for mercy on thy mother’s soul, That fell asleep to long, long torment, and through thee? Upon thy threshold whose the blood? And stirreth not and quickens Something beneath thy heart, Thy life disquieting With most foreboding presence?
MARGARET
Woe! woe! Would I were free from the thoughts That cross me, drawing hither and thither Despite me!
CHORUS
Diesira, dies illa, Solvet soeclum in favilla! (Sound of the organ.)
EVIL SPIRIT
Wrath takes thee! The trumpet peals! The graves tremble! And thy heart From ashy rest To fiery torments Now again requickened, Throbs to life!
MARGARET
Would I were forth! I feel as if the organ here My breath takes from me, My very heart Dissolved by the anthem!
CHORUS
Judex ergo cum sedebit, Quidquid latet, ad parebit, Nil inultum remanebit.
MARGARET
I cannot breathe! The massy pillars Imprison me! The vaulted arches Crush me!—Air!
EVIL SPIRIT
Hide thyself! Sin and shame Stay never hidden. Air? Light? Woe to thee!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, Quem patronem rogaturus, Cum vix Justus sit securus
EVIL SPIRIT
They turn their faces, The glorified, from thee: The pure, their hands to offer, Shuddering, refuse thee! Woe!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tune dicturus?
MARGARET
Neighbor! your cordial! (She falls in a swoon.)