Where the restless wave

Undulates ever —

Under and over

Their toiling strife,

I mingle and hover,
The spirit of life :

Hear the murmuring wheel of time, unawed,
As I weave the living mantle of God!

FAUSTUS.

Spirit, whose presence circles the wide earth,
How near akin to thine I feel my nature !

SPIRIT.

Man, thou art like those beings which thy mind

'S death, 'tis this pupil lad of mine -
He comes my airy guests to banish.
This elevating converse dread,
These visions, dazzlingly outspread
Before my senses, all will vanish
At the formal fellow's tread!

[A knock.

[Enter Wagner in his dressing-gown and night-cap a lamp in his hand. Faustus turns round, displeased.

WAGNER.

Forgive me, but I thought you were declaiming.
You have been reciting some Greek play, no doubt;
I wish to improve myself in this same art;
'Tis a most useful one. I've heard it said,
An actor might give lessons to a parson.

FAUSTUS.

Yes! when your parson is himself an actor;
A circumstance which very often happens!

WAGNER.

Oh! if a man shuts himself up

for ever

In his dull study; if he sees the world
Never, unless on some chance holyday,
Looks at it from a distance, through a telescope,
How can he learn to sway the minds of men
By eloquence? to rule them, or persuade ?

FAUSTUS.

If feeling does not prompt, in vain you strive;
If from the soul the language does not come,
By its own impulse, to impel the hearts

Of hearers, with communicated power,

In vain you strive — in vain you study earnestly. Toil on for ever; piece together fragments;

Cook up your broken scraps of sentences,

And blow, with puffing breath, a struggling light,
Glimmering confusedly now, now cold in ashes;
Startle the school-boys with your metaphors;
And, if such food may suit your appetite,
Win the vain wonder of applauding children!
But never hope to stir the hearts of men,
And mould the souls of many into one,

By words which come not native from the heart!

WAGNER.

EXPRESSION, graceful utterance, is the first

And best acquirement of the orator.

This do I feel, and feel my want of it!

FAUSTUS.

Dost thou seek genuine and worthy fame?
Not as our town declaimers use, delighted,
Like a brute beast, with chimes of jingling bells;
Reason and honest feeling want no arts

Of utterance ask no toil of elocution;

And when you speak in earnest, do you need
A search for words? Oh! these fine holyday phrases,
In which you robe your worn-out common-places,
These scraps of paper which you crimp and curl,

And twist into a thousand idle shapes,

These filigree ornaments are good for nothing,
Cost time and pains, please few, impose on no one;
Are unrefreshing, as the wind that whistles,

In autumn, 'mong the dry and wrinkled leaves.

WAGNER.

The search of knowledge is a weary one,

And life how short! Ars longa, Vita brevis!
How often have the heart and brain, o'er-tasked,
Shrunk back despairing from enquiries vain!
Oh! with what difficulty are the means
Acquired, that lead us to the springs of knowledge!
And when the path is found, ere we have trod
Half the long way-poor wretches! we must die!

FAUSTUS.

Are mouldy records, then, the holy springs,
Whose healing waters still the thirst within?
Oh! never yet hath mortal drunk

A draught restorative,

That welled not from the depths of his own soul!

Pardon me

WAGNER.

but you will at least confess

That 'tis delightful to transfuse yourself

Into the spirit of the ages past;

To see how wise men thought in olden time,

And how far we outstep their march in knowledge.

FAUSTUS.

Oh yes! as far as from the earth to heaven!
To us, my friend, the times that are gone by
Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals:
That which you call the spirit of ages past
Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors
In which those ages are beheld reflected,
With what distortion strange heaven only knows.
Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is

This study of thine, at the first glance we fly it.
A mass of things confusedly heaped together;
A lumber-room of dusty documents,

Furnished with all approved court-precedents,
And old traditional maxims! History!

Facts dramatised say rather action—plot —
Sentiment, every thing the writer's own,
As it best fits the web-work of his story,
With here and there a solitary fact

Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers,
Pointed with many a moral apophthegm,

And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows.

WAGNER.

But then the world, man's heart and mind, are

things

Of which 'twere well that each man had some

knowledge.