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The infinite, the insatiable desire of the human soul, which can never be wholly satisfied, which can never reach its term, this is the passion which possesses Faust, this is the rock upon which the hopes of the poor devil are shipwrecked, the poor devil who in the limitation of the merely critical and negative temper cannot understand that Faust can never be satisfied, will never say to the moment, 'Verweile doch, du bist zu schön. For the drama of Faust is not a drama of damnation, but of redemption, and though the breadth and scope of the whole conception pass beyond all presentation in complete and rounded form, the great tragedy of Gretchen takes us from the splendid but abstract world of ideas into the simplest experience of human life, where Faust becomes human through love itself, but too slowly, too late to avert the tragedy.
DU BIST SO SCHON was the unuttered invocation, while the VERWEILE DOCH was deemed unneedful. Little, I am ashamed to own, did I add either to my small classical or mathematical attainments. But I made friendships lifelong friendships, that I would not barter for the best of academical prizes.
The moments that are evil it eternalizes; the moments that might be good it hurries to annihilation. All that is most precious is most precarious. Vainly do we cry to the moment: 'Verweile doch, du bist so schön! Only the heavy hours are heavy-footed. The winged Psyche, even at the moment of birth, is sick with the pangs of dissolution. "These, surely, are facts, not imaginations.
Like the great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated Mephistopheles at last, I could have cried aloud to the fleeting moment, Verweile doch, du bist so schön! "Are you always gay?" I asked, suddenly. "How happy you must be!" "The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy," she answered, thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I find life very pleasant, and I tell it so."