Mephistopheles. There you are right! One thing alone gives me concern, The time is short, and we have much to learn. There is a way, if you would know it, Just take into your pay a poet; Then let the learned gentleman sweep Through the wide realms of imagination And every noble qualification, Upon your honored crown upheap, The strength of the lion, The wild deer's agility, The fire of the south, With the north's durability. Then let his invention the secret unfold, To be crafty and cunning, yet generous and bold; And teach your youthful blood, as poets can, To fall in love according to a plan. Myself have a shrewd notion where we might Enlist a cunning craftsman of this nature, And Mr. Microcosmus he is hight. Faust. What am I then, if still I strive in vain To reach the crown of manhood's perfect stature, The goal for which with all my life of life I strain? Mephistopheles. Thou art, do what thou wilt, just what thou art. Heap wigs on wigs by millions on thy head, And upon yard-high buskins tread, Still thou remainest simply what thou art. Faust. I feel it well, in vain have I uphoarded All treasures that the mind of man afforded, And when I sit me down, I feel no more A well of life within me than before; Not ev'n one hairbreadth greater is my height, Not one inch nearer to the infinite. Mephistopheles. My worthy friend, these things you view, Just as they appear to you; Some wiser method we must shape us, Ere the joys of life escape us. Why, what the devil! hands and feet, Brain and brawn and blood are thine; And what I drink, and what I eat, Whose can it be, if 'tis not mine? If I can number twice three horses, Are not their muscles mine? and when I'm mounted, I feel myself a man, and wheel my courses, Just as if four-and-twenty legs I counted. Quick then! have done with reverie, And dash into the world with me! I tell thee plain, a speculating fellow Is like an ox on heath all brown and yellow, Led in a circle by an evil spirit, With roods of lush green pasture smiling near it. Faust. But how shall we commence? Mephistopheles. We start this minute: Why, what a place of torture is here, And what a life you live within it! Yourself and your pack of younkers dear, Killing outright with ennui! Leave that to honest neighbor Paunch! Thrashing of straw is not for thee: Besides, into the best of all your knowledge, You know 'tis not permitted you to launch With chicken-hearted boys at College. Ev'n now, methinks, I hear one on the stair. Faust. Send him away: I cannot bear--