Before you standing, bodily and grey,
Physics and Metaphysics there.

Away!

MARGARET, with a lamp.

It feels so close, so musty here,

[She opens the window.

Yet outside does not warm appear.
I know not what doth o'er me come;
Would that my mother were at home.

O'er all my limbs it seemed a shudder played.
Well, I am but a silly fearful maid.

She begins to sing whilst she is undressing herself.
There was a king in Thule,

Right true unto the grave,

To him his sweetheart, dying,

A golden goblet gave.

Nought prized he more; at every feast

He drained it evermore,

And every time he drunk from it,

With tears his eyes ran o'er.

On his death-bed, his cities
He counted one by one;
Grudged nought to his successor,
Save this dear cup alone.

He sat at the regal banquet,
Round stood his chivalry,
In the high ancestral chamber,
In his castle by the sea.

There stood the ancient toper,

Then his last draught quaffed he;

Then flung the hallowed goblet,
Down in the deep, deep sea.

He saw it falling, filling,
Till in the deep it sank;

His

eyes failed as he watched it.

No drop more e'er he drank.

[She opens the press to put away her clothes and perceives the casket.

How comes this pretty casket here to be?

I locked the press most certainly.

'Tis wonderful; what can there be within?
Perchance by some one as a pledge brought in,
And that my mother money lent on it.
There to the ribbon hangs a key;

"Twere no great harm, methinks, to open it.
What is that? God in heaven! see !

I ne'er have seen such things in all my life.
Gems! Why, decked out in these, a noble's wife

Upon the highest holiday might go.

I wonder how on me the chain would show.

Whose all these fine things are I fain would know. [She puts them on and walks to the glass.

If but the earrings only were mine own.

One looks a different creature with them on.
What use is beauty? what is youth?
That is all very well in truth.

And then the world leaves all alone.

Half pity doth its praise express.

For gold contend,

On gold depend

Still all. Alas, we moneyless!

PROMENADE.

Faust in a reverie, walking up and down.
MEPHISTOPHELES meets him.

MEPHISTOPHEles.

By the pangs of despised love-by each damnable element,

I would I knew something worse, I might curse to

What now? What is it pinches thee so sore?
A face like thine I never saw before.

MEPHISTOPHEles.

I could bestow myself upon the

spot

On the Devil, if I myself a devil were not.

FAUST.

Hath aught occurred to thee, to shake thy brain?

It becomes thee to rave like one insane.

MEPHISTOPHEles.

Just think, the gems for Margaret that I got,
A priest has carried as a spoil away;

By chance a sight of them her mother caught,
Some secret fear came over her straightway.
The lady at a secret is wondrous clever,
She sniffs and snuffles at her prayer-book ever.
And of each article, by the smell,

Whether 'tis sacred or profane can tell.
She soon sniffed out of jewel and gem,
That not much blessing came with them.
My child, cried she, unlawful property
Ensnares the soul, withers the blood up dry;
We will devote them to the Virgin dear,
With heavenly manna she our souls will cheer.
Poor Margaret made a piteous face;

'Tis a gift-horse, perhaps she thought;

Nor truly, is he without grace,

Who here the gems so nicely brought.

Then sent her mother for a priest,

Who, scarcely had he heard the fun, Was with the prospect right well pleased.

He said, well have ye thought and done; He that himself subdues doth gain much good. The church hath a good stomach for such food. Whole countries hath it swallowed up with zest,