EXCERPT 2
[The clock strikes eleven.]
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
(2) O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!
[O slowly, slowly run, horses of the night]
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.
O, I’ll leap up to heaven!—Who pulls me down?—
See, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop of blood will save me: O my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him: O, spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? ’tis gone:
And see where God stretcheth out his arm,
And bends his ireful brows.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heaven!
No no, then will I headlong run into the earth:
Gape, earth! O, no, it will not harbour me!
(3) You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist,
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud[s],
That, when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smokey mouths;
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven!
[The clock strikes the half-hour.]
(4) O, half the hour is past! ‘twill all be past anon.
O, if my soul must suffer for my sin,
Impose some end to my incessant pain;
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav’d!
No end is limited to damned souls.
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
O, Pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed
All beasts are happy, for, when they die,
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;
But mine must live still to be plagued in hell.
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.
[The clock strikes twelve.]
(5) It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
O soul, be chang’d into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!
[ Thunder. Enter DEVILS. ]
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer;
I’ll burn my books!—Ah, Mephistophilis!