CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

94 PARACELSUS
Paracelsus. Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree
By the hour, nor count time lost.
Festus. So you shall gaze:
Those happy times will come again . . .
Paracelsus. Gone I gone I
Those pleasant times I Does not the moaning wind
Seem to bewail that we have gained such gains
And bartered sleep for them?
Festus. It is our trust
That there is yet another world to mend
All error and mischance.
Paracelsus. Another world I
And why this world, this common world, to be
A make-shift, a mere foil, how fair soever,
To some fine life to come? Man must be fed
With angel's food, forsooth; and some few traces,
Of a diviner nature whieh look out
Through his corporeal baseness, warrant him
In a supreme contempt for all provision
For his inferior tastes-some straggling marks
Which constitute his essence, just as truly
As here and there a gem would constitute
The rock, their barren bed, a diamond.
But were it so-were man all mind-he gains
A station little enviable. From God
Down to the lowest spirit ministrant,
Intelligence exists which casts our mind
Into immeasurable shade. No, no:
Love, hope, fear, faith-these mal(e humanity;
These are its signs, and note, and character;
And these I have lost I-gone, shut from me for ever,
Lllie a dead friend, safe from unkindness more I
See morn at length. The heavy darkness seems
Diluted; grey and clear without the stars;
The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves, as if
Some snake that weighed them down all night, let go
His hold; and from the east, fuller and fuller
Day, like a mighty river, is flowing in ;
But clouded, wintry, desolate, and cold:
Yet see how that broad, prickly, star-shaped plant,
Half down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves,
All thick and glistening with diamond dew.
And you depart for Einsiedeln this day:
And we have spent nIl night in talk like this I
If you would have me better for your love,
Revert no more to these sad themes.
Festus. One fayour,
And I have done. I leave you, deeply moved;
Unwilling to have fared so ,Yell, the while
©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia