Chorus

He who in time of peace

Wishes for war, soon

Witness’s the decease,

Of hope, and fortune.

Euphorion

Those who made this land,

With danger on every hand,

Free, and courageously,

Gave their blood lavishly:

Bring holy meaning

To that sacrifice –

See us still conquering

All whom we fight!

Chorus

Look up there, how high he climbs!

Yet he seems to us no smaller:

In his armour, as in triumph,

How he gleams in steel and silver.

Euphorion

Each one’s no longer conscious

Of the high wall, or the rest:

Since the one enduring fortress,

Is the soldier’s iron breast.

If you’d live unconquered,

Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:

Every wife an Amazon bred,

And every child a hero.

Chorus

Sacred Poetry

Climbing, and heavenly!

Shines there, the fairest star,

Far there, and still so far!

And yet it reaches here,

Always, and still we hear,

Joy, where we are.

Euphorion

No, not as a child do I appear,

This youth comes armed, you see:

In spirit he’s already a peer,

Of the strong, the bold, and free.

Now I go!

Now, and lo,

The path to glory shines for me.

Helen and Faust

You’ve scarcely been called to being,

Scarcely come to daylight’s gleam,

And from the heights you’re yearning,

For the place of pain, it seems.

Are we two

Naught to you?

Is the sweetest bond a dream?

Euphorion

Don’t you hear the thundering wave?

Through vale on vale the echoes call,

Host on host, in sand and spray,

Shock on shock, in anguished fall.

Understand

The command

Is death, now and for all.

Helen, Faust and the Chorus

What horror! What disaster!

Is then death ordained for you?

Euphorion

Should I watch it from afar?

No! I’ll share their trouble too.

Helen, Faust and the Chorus

Exuberance, danger,

Deadliest fate!

Euphorion

Yes! – I am winged here,

I will not wait!

Onward! I must! I must!

Let me but fly!

(He hurls himself into the air: his clothes bear him a moment, his head is illuminated and a streak of light follows.)

Chorus

Icarus! Icarus!

No more! We sigh.

(A beautiful youth falls at the parents’ feet. We imagine we see a well-known form in the dead body, but the physical part vanishes at once, while an aureole rises like a comet to heaven. The clothes, cloak and lyre remain on the ground.)

Helen and Faust

At once, joy is followed,

By bitterest pain.

Euphorion (From the depths.)

Mother, don’t leave me alone,

In the shadows’ domain!

(Pause)

Chorus (Dirge.)

Not alone! – No matter where you are,

For we believe in following you:

Oh! Though from the day you part,

Not one heart will part from you.

We scarcely wish to mourn you, even,

We sing in envy of your fate:

To you the clearest light of heaven,

Gave song and courage, true and great.

Ah! You were born for earthly fate,

High descent and supreme power:

Youth, sadly, while you went astray,

Was torn from you in its first hour!

You saw the world, with clearer vision,

You understood the yearning heart,

The glow of lovely woman’s passion,

And all singing’s rarest art.

Yet, irresistibly, you ran free,

In nets of indiscipline: you

Divorced yourself violently,

From custom, and from rule:

Until at last, through thinking deeper,

You gave courage greater weight,

And wished to win to splendour,

But that could not be your fate.

Whose then? – The gloomy question,

That destiny itself conceals,

While in days unblessed by fortune,

Our people’s silent blood congeals.

But new songs will refresh them,

No longer bow them to the floor,

The earth shall see them once again,

As it saw them once before.

(A complete Pause. The music ends.)

Helen (To Faust.)

Alas, the ancient word proves true for me, as well:

That joy and beauty never lastingly unite.

The thread of life, as the thread of love, is torn:

Painfully, lamenting both, I must say: farewell,

And enter your embrace, once, and then no more.

Persephone, receive me, and this child of ours!

(She embraces Faust: her body vanishes, her dress and veil remain in his hands.)

Phorkyas (To Faust.)

Hold tight to what alone remains to you.

Don’t let the garment go. Already, daemons

Pull at its hem, and wish to drag it down

Into the Underworld. Hold tight to it, now!

It no longer veils the divinity you’ve lost,

But it is divine. Employ then the priceless,

Noble gift for yourself, and soar on high:

It will carry you quickly from the lowest

To the highest ether, while you can endure.

We’ll meet once more, far away from here.

(Helen’s garments dissolve in mist, surround Faust, life him into the air, and drift away with him.)

(Phorkyas takes Euphorion’s tunic, cloak and lyre from the ground, steps forward to the proscenium, holds them aloft and speaks.)

As always, I’ve discovered something good!

The flame itself has gone, that’s understood,

Yet, for the world, I can’t be truly sad.

Here’s enough to fuel the poets’ regiment,

Stir their guild to envy, make them mad,

And if I still can’t lend them any talent,

At least I’ll have a costume for the lad.

(She seats herself on a low column in the proscenium.)

Panthalis

Quick now, girls! We’re all free of the magic now,

That old Thessalian woman’s enthralling spell,

That jangling dizziness of confusing sound,

Troubling the ear, and more the inner sense.

Down to Hades! Since with solemn step the Queen

Descended swiftly. Let her faithful servants’

Footsteps follow her downward path without delay.

We’ll find her beside the Unfathomable Throne.

Chorus

Of course, queens are happy anywhere:

Even in Hades they’re on top,

Associating proudly with their peers,

Persephone’s intimate company.

But for us, then, in the background,

Of the asphodel-meadowed depths,

With their long rows of poplars,

Their fruitless crowds of willows,

What fun is there for us,

Piping like bats at twilight,

In cheerless, ghostly whispers?

Panthalis

Who wins no name, and wills no noble work,

Belongs to the elements: so away with you!

My own intense desire’s to be with my Queen,

The individual’s loyalty and not just service.

(Exits.)

All

We’re returned to the light of day,

No longer individual, it’s true,

We feel it, and we know it,

But we’ll never go back to Hades.

Ever-living Nature,

Makes the most valid claim

On our spirits, and we on her.

A Section of the Chorus

We in all the thousand branches’ whispering tremors, swaying murmurs,

Sweetly rocked, will lightly draw the root-born founts of being upwards,

To the twigs: and now with leaves, and now with the exuberant blossom,

We’ll adorn their floating tresses, freely thriving in the breezes.

Straight away, now, as the fruit falls, happy crowds and flocks will gather,

For the picking and the tasting, swift-arriving, busy-thronging:

Bending down, now, all around us, as before the early gods.

A Second Section of the Chorus

We, against the rocky cliff face, by the smooth far-gleaming mirror,

We will nestle, softly moving, in the gentle waves that flatter:

Listening, hearing every echo, birdsong, now, or reedy fluting,

To the fearful voice of Pan, too, we’ll provide a ready answer:

To the murmuring, send a murmur: to the thunder roll our thunder,

In earth-shaking repetition, in threefold, or tenfold echo.

A Third Section of the Chorus

Sisters! We, of nimbler senses, hurry onwards with the waters:

For the richly covered, far-off, mountain ranges each entice us.

Ever deeper, ever downward, in meandering curves we’ll water

First the meadows, then the pastures, then the house and the garden,

Where the slender tips of cypress, over banks and watery mirror,

Over all the landscape, mark it, soaring skywards in the air.

A Fourth Section of the Chorus

Wander where you please, you others: we will circle, we will rustle

Round the densely planted hillside, where the vine stock’s growing green:

There, each day, we’ll pay attention to the cultivator’s passion,

Watch his diligence and care, there: watch for its uncertain outcome.

How he hoes, how he digs there, how he heaps, and prunes, and ties,

Prays to all the gods above him, most of all prays to the sun god.

The effeminate one, Bacchus, gives scant thought to faithful servants,

Rests in arbours, lolls in caverns, flirting with the youngest Faun.

Whatsoever he might need there, for his half-befuddled dreaming,

Is left for him in wineskins, stored around in jars and vessels,

Right and left, in cool recesses, gathered through the endless ages.

But when the gods, that’s Helios, we mean before all others,

Cooling, wetting, warming, heating, fill the vineyard’s horn of plenty,

Where the silent grower laboured, suddenly it’s all enlivened,

And in every leaf there’s rustling, rustling now from vine to vine.

Baskets creaking, buckets rattling, the tubs are carried groaning,

All towards enormous vats there, to the lusty treaders’ dance:

So, then, all the sacred bounty, of the pure bred juicy harvest,

Fiercely trodden, spurting, foaming, mingled there, is crudely squashed.

Now the cymbals’ brazen clamour’s ringing boldly in our ears,

As Dionysus from his Mysteries is unveiled, and is revealed:

Here with his goat-foot Satyrs, whirling goat-foot Satyresses,

And Silenus’s, unruly, long-eared ass, that brays amongst them.

Nothing’s spared! The cloven feet now, trample on all decency:

All the senses whirl, bewildered: hideously, ears are stunned, there.

Drunkards fumble for their wine-cups, head and bellies over-full,

Here and there one has misgivings, but can only swell the riot,

Since to hold the latest vintage, one must drain the oldest skin!

(The curtain falls. Phorkyas in the proscenium rises to full height, steps down from her tragic buskins, removes her mask and veil, and reveals herself as Mephistopheles, to point the last lines, by way of epilogue.)