devil in such good-humor. In the presence of God the Father, she insisted upon it, he ought to be more grim and spiteful. What will she say if she sees him promoted a step higher,—nay, perhaps, meets him in heaven?” On another occasion, he exclaimed (if we may trust Falk): “At bottom, the most of us do not know how either to love or to hate. They ‘don’t like’ me! An insipid phrase!—I don’t like them either. Especially when, after my death, my Walpurgis-Sack comes to be opened, and all the tormenting Stygian spirits, imprisoned until then, shall be let loose to plague all even as they plagued me; or if, in the continuation of Faust, they should happen to come upon a passage where the Devil himself receives Grace and Mercy from God,—that, I should say, they would not soon forgive!”
9. Chant of the Archangels.
The three Archangels advance in the order of their dignity, as it is given in the “Celestial Hierarchy” of Dionysius Areopagita; who was also Dante’s authority on this point (Paradiso, Canto XXVIII). Raphael, the inferior, commences, and Michael, the chief, closes the chant.
Shelley speaks of this “astonishing chorus,” and very truly says: “It is impossible to represent in another language the melody of the versification: even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas escape in the crucible of translation, and the reader is surprised to find a caput mortuum.”
I shall not, however, imitate Shelley in adding a literal translation. Here, more than in almost any other poem, the words acquire a new and indescribable power from their rhythmical collocation. The vast, wonderful atmosphere of space which envelops the lines could not be retained in prose, however admirably literal. The movement of the criginal is as important as its meaning. Shelley's translation of the stanzas, however, is preferable to Hayward's, which contains five inaccuracies.
The magnificent word Donnergang—“thunder-march”
