Gossip! the times thou badly comprehendest: 
What’s done has happed—­what haps, is done! 
’Twere better if for novelties thou sendest: 
By such alone can we be won.

FAUST

Let me not lose myself in all this pother! 
This is a fair, as never was another!

MEPHISTOPHELES

The whirlpool swirls to get above: 
Thou’rt shoved thyself, imagining to shove.

FAUST

But who is that?

MEPHISTOPHELES

Note her especially,
Tis Lilith.

FAUST

Who?

MEPHISTOPHELES

Adam’s first wife is she. 
Beware the lure within her lovely tresses,
The splendid sole adornment of her hair! 
When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare,
Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.

FAUST

Those two, the old one with the young one sitting,
They’ve danced already more than fitting.

MEPHISTOPHELES

No rest to-night for young or old! 
They start another dance:  come now, let us take hold!

FAUST (dancing with the young witch)

     A lovely dream once came to me;
     I then beheld an apple-tree,
     And there two fairest apples shone: 
     They lured me so, I climbed thereon.

THE FAIR ONE

     Apples have been desired by you,
     Since first in Paradise they grew;
     And I am moved with joy, to know
     That such within my garden grow.

MEPHISTOPHELES (dancing with the old one)

     A dissolute dream once came to me: 
     Therein I saw a cloven tree,
     Which had a-----------------;
     Yet,-----as ’twas, I fancied it.

THE OLD ONE

     I offer here my best salute
     Unto the knight with cloven foot! 
     Let him a-----------prepare,
     If him------------------does not scare.

PROKTOPHANTASMIST

Accursed folk!  How dare you venture thus? 
Had you not, long since, demonstration
That ghosts can’t stand on ordinary foundation? 
And now you even dance, like one of us!

THE FAIR ONE (dancing)

Why does he come, then, to our ball?

FAUST (dancing)

O, everywhere on him you fall! 
When others dance, he weighs the matter: 
If he can’t every step bechatter,
Then ’tis the same as were the step not made;
But if you forwards go, his ire is most displayed. 
If you would whirl in regular gyration
As he does in his dull old mill,
He’d show, at any rate, good-will,—­
Especially if you heard and heeded his hortation.