_All._ The well-tried man, and may he live, Long years a helping hand to give!
_Faust._ Bow down to Him on high who sends His heavenly help and helping friends! [_He goes on with_ WAGNER.]
_Wagner._ What feelings, O great man, thy heart must swell Thus to receive a people's veneration! O worthy all congratulation, Whose gifts to such advantage tell. The father to his son shows thee with exultation, All run and crowd and ask, the circle closer draws, The fiddle stops, the dancers pause, Thou goest--the lines fall back for thee. They fling their gay-decked caps on high; A little more and they would bow the knee As if the blessed Host came by.
_Faust._ A few steps further on, until we reach that stone; There will we rest us from our wandering. How oft in prayer and penance there alone, Fasting, I sate, on holy mysteries pondering. There, rich in hope, in faith still firm, I've wept, sighed, wrung my hands and striven This plague's removal to extort (poor worm!) From the almighty Lord of Heaven. The crowd's applause has now a scornful tone; O couldst thou hear my conscience tell its story, How little either sire or son Has done to merit such a glory! My father was a worthy man, confused And darkened with his narrow lucubrations, Who with a whimsical, though well-meant patience, On Nature's holy circles mused. Shut up in his black laboratory, Experimenting without end, 'Midst his adepts, till he grew hoary, He sought the opposing powers to blend. Thus, a red lion,[11] a bold suitor, married The silver lily, in the lukewarm bath, And, from one bride-bed to another harried, The two were seen to fly before the flaming wrath. If then, with colors gay and splendid, The glass the youthful queen revealed, Here was the physic, death the patients' sufferings ended, And no one asked, who then was healed? Thus, with electuaries so satanic, Worse than the plague with all its panic, We rioted through hill and vale; Myself, with my own hands, the drug to thousands giving, They passed away, and I am living To hear men's thanks the murderers hail!
_Wagner._ Forbear! far other name that service merits! Can a brave man do more or less Than with nice conscientiousness To exercise the calling he inherits? If thou, as youth, thy father honorest, To learn from him thou wilt desire; If thou, as man, men with new light hast blest, Then may thy son to loftier heights aspire.