Mephistopheles

He sleeps! Enough, ye fays! your airy number Have sung him truly into slumber: For this performance I your debtor prove.— Not yet art thou the man, to catch the Fiend and hold him!— With fairest images of dreams infold him, Plunge him in seas of sweet untruth! Yet, for the threshold’s magic which controlled him, The Devil needs a rat’s quick tooth. I use no lengthened invocation: Here rustles one that soon will work my liberation.

The lord of rats and eke of mice, Of flies and bed-bugs, frogs and lice, Summons thee hither to the door-sill, To gnaw it where, with just a morsel Of oil, he paints the spot for thee:— There com’st thou, hopping on to me! To work, at once! The point which made me craven Is forward, on the ledge, engraven. Another bite makes free the door: So, dream thy dreams, O Faust, until we meet once more!

FAUST (awaking)

Am I again so foully cheated? Remains there naught of lofty spirit-sway, But that a dream the Devil counterfeited, And that a poodle ran away?