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EVIL-SPIRIT behind MARGARET
[Illustration: VALENTINE’S DEATH Franz Simm]
How different, Gretchen, was it once with thee,
When thou, still full of innocence,
Here to the altar camest,
And from the small and well-con’d book
Didst lisp thy prayer,
Half childish sport,
Half God in thy young heart!
Gretchen!
What thoughts are thine?
What deed of shame
Lurks in thy sinful heart?
Is thy prayer utter’d for thy mother’s
soul,
Who into long, long torment slept through thee?
Whose blood is on thy threshold?—
And stirs there not already ’neath thy heart
Another quick’ning pulse, that even now
Tortures itself and thee
With its foreboding presence?
Woe! Woe!
Oh, could I free me from the thoughts
That hither, thither, crowd upon my brain,
Against my will!
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla.
[The organ sounds.]
Grim horror seizes thee!
The trumpet sounds!
The graves are shaken!
And thy heart
From ashy rest
For torturing flames
Anew created,
Trembles into life!
MARGARET
Would I were hence!
It is as if the organ
Choked my breath,
As if the choir
Melted my inmost heart!
Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet adparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.
MARGARET
I feel oppressed!
The pillars of the wall
Imprison me!
The vaulted roof
Weighs down upon me!—air!
Wouldst hide thee? sin and shame
Remain not hidden!
Air! light!
Woe’s thee!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Quem patronum rogaturus!
Cum vix justus sit securus.
The glorified their faces turn
Away from thee!
Shudder the pure to reach
Their hands to thee!
Woe!
CHORUS
Quid sum miser tunc dicturus—
Neighbor! your smelling bottle!
[She swoons away.]
[Illustration: MARGARET’S DOWNFALL From the Painting by Wilhelm von Kaulbach]
THE HARTZ MOUNTAINS. DISTRICT OF
SCHIERKE AND ELEND
FAUST and MEPHISTOPHELES
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