A few more steps ascend, as far as yonder stone!—­
Here from our wandering will we rest contented. 
Here, lost in thought, I’ve lingered oft alone,
When foolish fasts and prayers my life tormented. 
Here, rich in hope and firm in faith,
With tears, wrung hands and sighs, I’ve striven,
The end of that far-spreading death
Entreating from the Lord of Heaven! 
Now like contempt the crowd’s applauses seem: 
Couldst thou but read, within mine inmost spirit,
How little now I deem,
That sire or son such praises merit! 
My father’s was a sombre, brooding brain,
Which through the holy spheres of Nature groped and wandered,
And honestly, in his own fashion, pondered
With labor whimsical, and pain: 
Who, in his dusky work-shop bending,
With proved adepts in company,
Made, from his recipes unending,
Opposing substances agree. 
There was a Lion red, a wooer daring,
Within the Lily’s tepid bath espoused,
And both, tormented then by flame unsparing,
By turns in either bridal chamber housed. 
If then appeared, with colors splendid,
The young Queen in her crystal shell,
This was the medicine—­the patients’ woes soon ended,
And none demanded:  who got well? 
Thus we, our hellish boluses compounding,
Among these vales and hills surrounding,
Worse than the pestilence, have passed. 
Thousands were done to death from poison of my giving;
And I must hear, by all the living,
The shameless murderers praised at last!

WAGNER

Why, therefore, yield to such depression? 
A good man does his honest share
In exercising, with the strictest care,
The art bequeathed to his possession! 
Dost thou thy father honor, as a youth? 
Then may his teaching cheerfully impel thee: 
Dost thou, as man, increase the stores of truth? 
Then may thine own son afterwards excel thee.

FAUST

O happy he, who still renews
The hope, from Error’s deeps to rise forever! 
That which one does not know, one needs to use;
And what one knows, one uses never. 
But let us not, by such despondence, so
The fortune of this hour embitter! 
Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight’s glow,
The green-embosomed houses glitter! 
The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil,
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring! 
Then would I see eternal Evening gild
The silent world beneath me glowing,
On fire each mountain-peak, with peace each valley filled,
The silver brook to golden rivers flowing. 
The mountain-chain, with all its gorges deep,
Would then no more impede my godlike motion;
And now before mine eyes expands the ocean
With all its bays, in shining sleep!