1. |
Faust's rave
08:14
|
|||
FAUST
I only through the world have flown;
Each appetite I seized as by the hair;
What not sufficed me, forth I let it fare,
And what escaped me, I let go.
...
The sphere of Earth is known enough to me;
The view beyond is barred immutably:
A fool, who there his blinking eyes directeth,
And o'er his clouds of peers a place expecteth!
Firm let him stand, and look around him well!
The World means something, to the Capable.
Why needs he through Eternity to wend?
He here acquires what he can apprehend.
Thus let him wander down his earthly day;
When spirits haunt, go quietly his way;
In marching onwards, bliss and torment find,
Though, every moment, with unsated mind!
...
The Night seems deeper now to press around me,
But in my inmost spirit all is light;
I rest not till the finished work hath crowned me:
The master's word alone bestows the might.
Up from your couches, vassals, man by man!
Make grandly visible my daring plan!
Seize now your tools, with spade and shovel press!
The work traced out must be a swift success.
Quick diligence, severest ordering
The most superb reward shall bring;
And, that the mighty work completed stands,
One mind suffices for a thousand hands.
...
MEPHISTOPHELES
And yet, thou 'rt laboring for us alone,
With all thy dikes and bulwarks daring;
Since thou for Neptune art preparing -
The Ocean-Devil - carousal great.
In every way shall ye be stranded;
The elements with us are banded,
And ruin is the certain fate.
|
||||
2. |
Prometheus
11:14
|
|||
Cover your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And test your strength, like a boy
Beheading thistles,
On oaks and mountain peaks;
Yet you must leave
My earth alone,
And my hut you did not build,
And my hearth,
Whose fire
You envy me.
I know nothing more paltry
Beneath the sun than you, gods!
Meagerly you nourish
Your majesty
On levied offerings
And the breath of prayer,
And would starve, were
Not children and beggars
Optimistic fools.
When I was a child,
Not knowing which way to turn,
I raise my misguided eyes
To the sun, as if above it there were
An ear to hear my lament,
A heart like mine,
To pity me in my anguish.
Who helped me
Withstand the Titans’ insolence?
Who saved me from death
And slavery?
Did you not accomplish all this yourself,
Sacred glowing heart?
And did you not – young, innocent,
Deceived – glow with gratitude for your deliverance
To that slumber in the skies?
I honour you? Why?
Did you ever soothe the anguish
That weighed me down?
Did you ever dry my tears
When I was terrified?
Was I not forged into manhood
By all-powerful Time
And everlasting Fate,
My masters and yours?
Did you suppose
I should hate life,
Flee into the wilderness,
Because not all
My blossoming dreams bore fruit?
Here I sit, making men
In my own image,
A race that shall be like me,
That shall suffer, weep,
Know joy and delight,
And ignore you
As I do!
|
||||
3. |
Lucifer in starlight
07:43
|
|||
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
|
||||
4. |
Faust's grave
10:59
|
|||
FAUST
Each day report me, and correctly note
How grows in length the undertaken moat.
MEPHISTOPHELES (half aloud)
When they to me the information gave,
They spake not of a moat, but of - a grave.
...
FAUST
Then dared I hail the Moment fleeing:
"Ah, still delay - thou art so fair!"
The traces cannot, of mine earthly being,
In aeons perish, - they are there! -
In proud fore-feeling of such lofty bliss,
I now enjoy the highest Moment, - this!
[Faust sinks back: the lemures (spirit of the dead) take him and lay him upon the ground.]
MEPHISTOPHELES
No joy could sate him, and suffice no bliss!
To catch but shifting shapes was his endeavor:
The latest, poorest, emptiest Moment - this, -
He wished to hold it fast forever.
Me he resisted in such vigorous wise,
But Time is lord, on earth the old man lies.
The clock stands still—
CHORUS
Stands still! silent as midnight, now!
The index falls.
MEPHISTOPHELES
It falls; and it is finished, here!
CHORUS
’Tis past!
MEPHISTOPHELES
Past! a stupid word.
If past, then why?
Past and pure Naught, complete monotony!
What good for us, this endlessly creating?—
What is created then annihilating?
“And now it’s past!” Why read a page so twisted?
’Tis just the same as if it ne’er existed,
Yet goes in circles round as if it had, however:
I’d rather choose, (instead,) the Void forever.
CHORUS OF ANGELS
Hallowed glories!
Round whom they brood,
Wakes unto being
Of bliss with the Good.
Join ye, the Glorified,
Rise to your goal!
Airs are all purified, -
Breathe now the soul!
CHORUS MYSTICUS
All things transitory
But as symbols are sent:
Earth’s insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable,
Here it is done:
The Woman Soul leadeth us
Upward and on!
|
||||
5. |
The last shelter
06:10
|
|||
Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone-to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.
Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!
The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
All-all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.
The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love broken,
No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.
|
Streaming and Download help
jöjjön recommends:
If you like jöjjön, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp