FAUST. Quite easily--one listens to one's heart, And when its longings seem too great to bear We look around for one ... HELEN. our joy to share. FAUST. Not past nor future loving hearts can bless, The _present_-- HELEN. is alone our happiness. FAUST. Before the prize of beauty, lo I stand, But who assures the prize to me? HELEN. My hand!) In the midst of this life of chivalrous love and romance Faust and Helen pass a period of ecstatic bliss. But, as Goethe himself found, such ecstasies are only a passing phase. The end comes inevitably and suddenly. A son is born to them, Euphorion by name (the name of the winged son of Helen and Achilles, according to one legend). He is no common human child. As a butterfly from its chrysalis he bursts at once into fully developed existence. He is of enchanting beauty but wild and capricious; spurning the common earth he climbs ever higher and higher amidst the mountain crags, singing ravishing melodies to his lyre. He reaches the topmost crag and casts himself into the air. A flame flickers upwards, and the body of a beautiful youth 'in which one seems to recognize a well-known form' falls to the ground, at the feet of Faust and Helen. Euphorion symbolizes modern poetry, and the well-known form is that of Byron. For a moment the body lies there; it then dissolves in flame, which ascends to heaven, and a voice is heard calling on Helen to follow. Yes, she must follow. As flame she must return to her home in the Empyrean--the home of ideal beauty and all other ideals. However much we strive to realize ideal beauty in art or in our lives, however we may hold it to our hearts as a warm and living possession, it always escapes our grasp. The short-lived winged child of poetic inspiration gleams but for a moment and disappears, as a flame flickering back to its native empyrean. And she, the mother, she too must follow, leaving us alone to face the stern reality of life and of death. In the embrace of Faust Helen melts away into thin air, leaving in his arms her robe and veil. These change into a cloud, which envelops him, raises him into the air and bears him also away. The Phorkyad picks up Euphorion's lyre and mantle; he steps forward and addresses the audience, assuring them that in the leavings of poetic genius he has got enough to fit out any number of modern poets, and is open to a bargain. He then swells up to a gigantic height, removes the Gorgon-mask, and reveals himself as Mephistopheles once more the northern modern devil; and the curtain falls.