in the heart of his heart.
Margaret is present and guides him (as Beatrice guided Dante) upward, to
the _Eternal-Feminine_, that is to say, to the metaphysical consummation
of all male yearning for love. "The love from on high" saves Faust as it
has saved Dante. _The blessed boys_ (who, as well as the angels, are
present in both poems) singing:

Whom ye adore shall ye
See face to face.[2]

are again referring to the transcendently loving lover. Like Beatrice,
Margaret intercedes for him (intercession for her lover has always been
woman's profoundest prayer) with the Queen of Heaven:

Incline, oh incline,
All others excelling,
In glory aye dwelling,
Unto my bliss thy glance benign;
The loved one ascending,
His long trouble ending,
Comes back, he is mine!

These words are more intimate and human than the words of Beatrice, but
fundamentally they mean the same thing. Dante, meeting Beatrice again,
says:

And o'er my spirit that so long a time
Had from her presence felt no shuddering dread,
Albeit my eyes discovered her not, there moved
A hidden virtue from her, at whose touch
The power of ancient love was strong within me.[3]

But when he who has said so much beholds her face to face, he is
stricken dumb.

Beatrice receives Dante from his guide and herself unveils to him the
mysteries of life. Similarly Margaret beseeches the Virgin:

To guide him, be it given to me
Still dazzles him the new-born day!

and receives from on high the command which the symbolically burdened
Beatrice knows intuitively:

Ascend, thine influence feeleth he,
He'll follow on thine upward way.

As Beatrice approaches, the angels sing:

Oh! Turn
Thy saintly eyes to this thy faithful one,
Who to behold thee many a wearisome pace
Hath measured.

And with the fundamental feeling of Dante's _Divine Comedy_ Faust
concludes:

The ever-womanly
Draws us above.

The earthly love of his youth is fulfilled in the dream of metaphysical
love, in the dream of a divine woman. The genius creates, at the
conclusion of his life, the fulfilment of all longing. It may sound
paradoxical, but Faust--like Dante and Peer Gynt--unconsciously sought
Margaret in the hurly-burly of the world; not the young girl whom he had
seduced and deserted, but the _Eternal-Feminine_, the purely spiritual
love, which in his youth he divined, b