©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

70 FAUST
Crucibles from years undated,
Chairs of structure antiquated,
Are in strange confusion hurled!
Here, Faustus, is thy world-a world!
Still dost thou ask, why in thy breast
The sick heart flutters ill at rest?
Why a dull sense of suffering
Deadens life's current at the spring?
From living nature thou hast fled
To dwell 'mong fragments of the dead;
And for the lovely scenes which Heaven
Hath made man for, to man hath given;
Hast chosen to pore o'er mouldering bones
Of brute and human skeletons!
Away-away and far away!
This book, where secret spells are scanned,
Traced by NOSTRADAM'S own hand,
Will be thy strength and stay:
The courses of the stars to thee
No longer are a mystery;
The thoughts of Nature thou canst seek,
As Spirits with their brothers speak.
It is, it is the planet hour
Of thy own being; light, and power,
And fervour to the soul are given,
As proudly it ascends its heaven.
To ponder here, o'er spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines;
And from their actual use refrain,
Were time and labour lost in vain:
Then ye, whom I feel floating near me,
Spirits, answer, ye who hear me !
[He opens the book, and light