In the opening scene of Part II we find him 'lying on a grassy bank, worn out and attempting to sleep.' A considerable time has evidently elapsed--a time doubtless of bitter grief and of the fiercest accusation against his evil counsellor, that part of his human nature which is represented by Mephistopheles and from which even in the last hour of his life (as we shall see) he confesses it to be impossible wholly to free himself: Dämonen, weiss ich, wird man schwerlich los. Das geistig-strenge Band is nicht zu trennen. 'From demons it is, I know, scarce possible to free oneself. The spiritual bond is too strong to break.' But it is not from grief or self-accusation that Faust is to gain new inspiration. It is from the healing power of Nature--in which Goethe believed far more than in remorse. The scene amidst which Faust is now lying reminds one of some Swiss valley. The rising sun is pouring a flood of golden light over the snow-fields of the distant mountains and down from the edge of an overhanging precipice is falling a splendid cataract, such as the Reichenbach or the Staub-bach, amidst whose spray gradually forms itself, as the sunshine touches it, an iridescent bow, brightening and fading, but hanging there immovable. Through this scene are flitting elfin forms--Ariel and his fays--singing to the liquid tones of Aeolian harps and lapping Faust's world-worn senses in the sweet harmonies of Nature, tenderly effacing the memories of the past and inspiring him with new hopes and new strength to face once more the battle of life. He watches the rising sun, but blinded by excess of light he turns away, unable to gaze upon the flaming source of life, as erst he had turned from the apparition of the Earth-spirit. He seeks to rest his dazzled eyes in reflected light (a metaphor used, as you may remember, also by Socrates in the parable of the Cave)--in the sun-lit mountain slopes, the pine-woods and the glittering walls of rock, and in the colours of the foam-bow suspended amidst the spray of the swift down-thundering cataract. In the ever-changing colours but motionless form of this bow hanging over the downward rush of the torrent Faust finds a symbol of human life suspended with its ever-varying hues above the stream of time. It is one of the truest and the most beautiful of all similitudes, this of pure sunlight refracted and broken into colours, symbolizing the One and the Many, the perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal. Doubtless you are already thinking of Shelley's magnificent lines: The One remains, the Many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly, Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity.