not repeated until the finale; and his comparison had reference to the idea expressed in these lines.
13. But ye, God’s sons in love and duty.
Here the Lord, turning away from Mephistopheles, suddenly addresses the Archangels and the Heavenly Hosts. The expression Das Werdende, in the third following line, which I have translated “Creative Power,” means, literally, “that which is developing into being.” Shelley, who was not, and did not pretend to be, a good German scholar, entirely misses the meaning of the closing quatrain, notwithstanding he avoids the rhymed translation. His lines,
have nothing of the suggestive force and fulness of the original.
Hayward quotes, apparently from a private letter, Carlyle’s interpretation of the passage: “There is, clearly, no translating of these lines, especially on the spur of the moment; yet it seems to me that the meaning of them is pretty distinct. The Lord has just remarked, that man (poor fellow) needs a devil, as travelling companion, to spur him on by means of Denial; whereupon, turning round (to the angels and other perfect characters), he adds, ‘But ye, the genuine sons of Heaven, joy ye in the living fulness of the beautiful (not of the logical, practical, contradictory, wherein man toils imprisoned): let Being (or Existence), which is everywhere a glorious birth, into higher being, as it forever works and lives, encircle you with the soft ties of love; and whatsoever wavers in the doubtful empire of appearance’ (as all earthly things do), ‘that do ye, by enduring thought, make firm.’ Thus would Das Werdende, the thing that is a-being, mean no less than the universe (the visible universe) itself; and I paraphrase it by ‘Existence, which is everywhere a birth, into higher Existence,’ and make a comfortable enough kind of sense out of that quatrain.”
