Enter Faust and Wagner.

Faust. The ice is now melted from stream and brook By the Spring’s genial life-giving look; Forth smiles young Hope in the greening vale, And ancient Winter, feeble and frail, Creeps cowering back to the mountains grey; And thence he sends, as he hies him away, Fitfullest brushes of icy hail, Sweeping the plain in his harmless flight. But the sun may brook no white, Everywhere stirs he the vegetive strife, Flushing the fields with the glow of life; But since few flowers yet deck the mead He takes him gay-dressed folk in their stead. Now from these heights I turn me back To view the city’s busy track. Through the dark, deep-throated gate They are pouring and spreading in motley array. All sun themselves so blithe to-day. The Lord’s resurrection they celebrate, For that themselves to life are arisen. From lowly dwellings’ murky prison, From labor and business’ fetters tight, From the press of gables and roofs that meet Over the squeezing narrow street, From the churches’ solemn night Have they all been brought to the light. Lo! how nimbly the multitude Through the fields and the gardens hurry, How, in its breadth and length, the flood Wafts onward many a gleesome wherry, And this last skiff moves from the brink So laden that it seems to sink. Ev’n from the far hills’ winding way I’ the sunshine glitter their garments gay. I hear the hamlet’s noisy mirth; Here is the people’s heaven on earth, And great and small rejoice to-day. Here may I be a man, here dare The joys of men with men to share.

Wagner. With you, Herr Doctor, one is proud to walk, Sharing your fame, improving by your talk; But, for myself, I shun the multitude, Being a foe to everything that’s rude. I may not brook their senseless howling, Their fiddling, screaming, ninepin bowling; Like men possessed, they rave along, And call it joy, and call it song.