Mr. Faust Part 12

OLDHAM

Faust, I feel, Transfused with light and glory, that deep peace Awaiting. There shall perish like a flame The pa.s.sions which have seared my tortured soul All my life long. They die; and nothingness Like a cool flood sweeps over me. Ah, come Where never storm shall smite!

FAUST

I see the gates; I see the cool breast of the silvery flood Of refuge and oblivion.... Fare you well, Oldham, and light go with you! For I go, Alas, not with you....

OLDHAM

Faust, Faust, turn not back!

I, who am casting all desires in dust, To one desire still cling: I long that joy Of such deliverance fill you as fills me On this first step of the sublime ascent.

FAUST

I see the light that waits you on the peak; And my heart follows you. But my stern soul Plucks me yet back with cold insistency I cannot master.... Go! If I could pray, My prayers should follow you. My visions shall; My love shall fold you. But I cannot come Where you shall go; I cannot cast aside All that I surely know--this pitiful And shattered mortal life, with its strange gleams And shadows--and embrace the icy void Where Being trembles on the final verge.

To bid life cease--but linger as the moon Lingers in heaven--ah, that is horrible Beyond life's proper horrors!... Were my pain A single atom greater--were my soul A single breath more weary--I would come.

But now I must confront the winds of heaven Still master of my destinies.... To the last, Not in such tomb-world can my spirit rest.

No golden clouds that throng Nirvana's gates Shall tempt me there to enter and resign My right to strain beyond all gates that be....

But you I cannot counsel....

OLDHAM

Me the peace Already laps with wavelets of the flood.

FAUST

The flood is sundering us.

OLDHAM

Farewell, farewell, Beloved friend. I with the Holy One Henceforth am linked; and grief shall follow me In what should be your footsteps.

FAUST

Have no grief.

In the vast deeps of life's salt bitter sea Perhaps awaits my anodyne, to heal Life's wounds....

OLDHAM

Farewell! I go to paradise.

[_Oldham and the Holy One move slowly away together, pa.s.s through the colonnades, and disappear into the forest. Faust follows with his eyes their retreating figures._

SATAN

You do not know a paradise when you see it!

Some day, when I have time, I'll start a school To give instruction to great minds like you-- Debutant!

FAUST

Ah, I had forgotten you....

Two men are worth a thousand devils still.

SATAN

I overrated you. Now get you gone Before I call the savagery that sleeps Here in the jungle to annihilate you For your unparalleled stupidity.

FAUST

Stupidity or no, I have one word Still to say to you, my malicious friend: To heel!

SATAN

What!

FAUST

Aye, to heel, I say! Crouch down And follow me, my hound and servitor From this hour forth!

SATAN

You have grown very witty.

Your wit, however, does not please me.

FAUST

Please you!

There are few things that I desire less.

To heel!

SATAN

What fiends possess you? Ah, I see!

You are still thinking of that wager made, That jest of ours.

FAUST

I am still thinking of it.

SATAN

You do not mean that now you wish to claim That forfeit seriously?

FAUST

I mean quite that.

SATAN