ous light!
Dark clouds that o'er us spread,
Melt in thin air!
Stars, your soft radiance shed,
Tender and fair!
Girt with celestial might,
Winging their airy flight,
Spirits are thronging.
Follows their forms of light
Infinite longing!
Flutter their vestures bright
O'er field and grove!
Where in their leafy bower
Lovers the livelong hour
Vow deathless love.
Soft bloometh bud and bower!
Bloometh the grove!
Grapes from the spreading vine
Crown the full measure;
Fountains of foaming wine
Gush from the pressure.
Still where the currents wind,
Gems brightly gleam;
Leaving the hills behind
On rolls the stream;
Now into ample seas,

Spreadeth the flood--
Laving the sunny leas,
Mantled with wood.

[Illustration: FAUST AND MEPHISTO Liezen-Mayer]

Rapture the feather'd throng,
Gaily careering,
Sip as they float along;
Sunward they're steering;
On toward the isles of light
Winging their way,
That on the waters bright
Dancingly play.
Hark to the choral strain,
Joyfully ringing!
While on the grassy plain
Dancers are springing;
Climbing the steep hill's side,
Skimming the glassy tide,
Wander they there;
Others on pinions wide
Wing the blue air;
All lifeward tending, upward still wending,
Toward yonder stars that gleam,
Far, far above;
Stars from whose tender beam
Rains blissful love.

MEPHISTOPHELES

Well done, my dainty spirits! now he slumbers!
Ye have entranc'd him fairly with your numbers!
This minstrelsy of yours I must repay.--
Thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!--
With fairest shapes your spells around him cast,
And plunge him in a sea of dreams!
But that this charm be rent, the threshold passed,
Tooth of rat the way must clear.
I need not conjure long it seems,
One rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear.
The master of the rats and mice,
Of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice,
Commands thy presence; without fear
Come forth and gnaw the threshold here,
Where he with oil has smear'd it.--Thou
Com'st hopping forth already! Now
To work! The point that holds me bound
Is in the outer angle found.
Another bite--so--now 'tis done--
Now, Faustus, till we meet again, dream on.

FAUST (_awaking_)

Am I once more deluded! must I deem
That thus the throng of spirits disappear?
The devil's presence--was it but a dream?
Hath but a poodle scap'd and left me here?

STUDY

FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES

FAUST

A knock? Come in!