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“How sadly rises, incomplete and ruddy,

The moon’s lone disk, with its belated glow,

And lights so dimly, that, as one advances,

At every step one strikes a rock or tree!

Let us, then, use a Jack-o’-Lantern’s glances:

I see one yonder, burning merrily.

Ho, there! my friend! I’ll levy thine attendance:

Why waste so vainly thy resplendence?

Be kind enough to light us up the steep.”

After which Faust, in a musing mood, looks down from the Brocken heights and replies:—

“How strangely glimmers through the hollows

A dreary light, like that of dawn!

Its exhalation tracks and follows

The deepest gorges, faint and wan.

Here steam, there rolling vapor sweepeth;

Here burns the glow through film and haze:

Now like a tender thread it creepeth,

Now like a fountain leaps and plays.

Here winds away, and in a hundred

Divided veins the valley braids:

There in a corner pressed and sundered,

Itself detaches, spreads and fades.

Here gush the sparkles incandescent

Like scattered showers of golden sand;—

But, see! in all their height at present,