(first stanza, fourth line)—had already occurred in a fine line of one of Schiller’s earliest poems,—“Elysium”:—
“Berge bebten unter dessen Donnergang.”
10. Pardon, this troop I cannot follow after.
Mephistopheles here refers to the Chant of the Archangels. His mocking spirit is at once manifested in these lines, and in his ironical repetition of “the earliest day.”
11. While Man’s desires and aspirations stir,
He cannot choose but err.
The original of this is the single, well-known line: Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt. It has seemed to me impossible to give the full meaning of these words—that error is a natural accompaniment of the struggles and aspirations of Man—in a single line. Here, as in a few other places, I do not feel bound to confine myself to the exact measure and limit of the original. The reader may be interested in comparing some other versions:—
Hayward.—Man is liable to error, while his struggle lasts.
Anster.—Man’s hour on Earth is weakness, error, strife.
Brooks.—Man errs and staggers from his birth.
Swanwick.—Man, while he striveth, is prone to err.
Blackie.—Man must still err, so long he strives.
Martin.—Man, while his struggle lasts, is prone to stray.
Beresford.—Man errs as long as lasts his strife.
Birch.—Man’s prone to err in acquisition. (!)
Blaze.—L’homme s’égare, tant qu’il cherche son but.
12. A good man, through obscurest aspiration,
Has still an instinct of the one true way.
In these lines the direction of the plot is indicated. They suggest, in advance, its moral dénouement, at the close of the Second Part. Goethe, on one occasion, compared the “Prologue in Heaven” to the overture of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which a certain musical phrase occurs which is
