Goethe’s Mephistopheles ruminates on Faust

Goethe’s Mephistopheles ruminates on Faust

Goethe’s Mephistopheles (In Faust’s long gown.)
Reason and Science you despise,
Man’s highest powers: now the lies
Of the deceiving spirit must bind you
With those magic arts that blind you,
And I’ll have you, totally –
Fate gave him such a spirit
It urges him ever onwards, wildly,
And, in his hasty striving, he has leapt
Beyond all earth’s ecstasies.
I’ll drag him through raw life,
Through the meaningless and shallow,
I’ll freeze him: stick to him: keep him ripe,
Frustrate his insatiable greed, allow
Food and drink to drift before his eyes:
In vain he’ll beg for consummation,
And if he weren’t the devil’s, why
He’d still go to his ruination!

Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesIVtoVI.htm>