THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, 23 April 1842, Page 28

THE EDITOR'S PORTFOLIO.

TRANSLATIONS FROM •! FAtJST." I. From the Scene in the Hartz Mountains, on the tfralpurgis Night, Faust, Mbfhißtophki.es, Ignis Fatuus (in alternate chorut). On the sphere of charm and spell We have entered, it should seem. Lead us onward — guide us well Through the Realm of Mist and Dream 1 Lead us onward ! Let us haste O'er the wild and boundless waste ! See the trees receding fast, As we hurry wildly by ; See, the crags we hasten past Frown upon us while we fly ! And their snouts gigantic, ho ! How they snort ! — how they blow ! Over turf and over stone Stream and mountain-torrent force, With a 'music bf their own, Headlong down their rapid course, Murmuring round, beneath, above — Listen to the rushing sound ! — All we hope and all we love Tongues unnumbered here have found ! These choral sounds are Heaven's own songs: Now their mingled music swells On the ear — now melts away — And Echo, like a voice that tells Of some long-departed day, Still the dying notes prolongs. Uhu!— Schuhu '.—They wheel this way ! Screech-owl, lapwing, screaming jay, Do they all remain awake ? The long-legged salamanders glide Through the bosom of the brake ; The tangled roots, like serpents, slide Over rock and over sand, Twining many a magic band, Now to startle — now to hold Fast in their fantastic fold — Now, in strange contortions whirling, See them round the wanderer frisk, Their polypus-like fibres curling, Many-speckled and grotesque ! The thousand-coloured mice together, O'er the moss and through the heather, Hold their way the livelong night ; ' While round the motley legion swarming, •. The fire-flies wheel their sparkling flight, Their mingled mass of light A fire-inwoven escort forming ! But, tell me, do we move or stay ? All around seems swept away. They sink — they fade— crags, rocks, and trees, All the vision vanishes. And the mocking meteors flout us, Twinkling merrily about us ! MEPHfSTOPHELES. Hold to my mantle firm and fast, A place of rest we' gain at last, Where we may now — a sight amazing — See Mammon in the mountain blazing !

Faust. How strangely, through the shadowy vale, . A doubtful twilight seems to glow — A fitful glimmering, faint and pale, Gleams in the gloomy gulf below — Round us a fiery mist is spread, Rising in rolling wreaths from Earth, Here, slinking to a slender thread, There, bursting like a fountain forth ; Now, through the vale its hundred veins In wide and wild dispersion wind, Its volumed rush it now restrains, In some close mountain-gorge confined ; And now, amid the illumined kinds, Showering its fiery scintillations, It bursts, like scattered golden sands, In myriads of coruscations — While, flaming 'mid the gloom of night, Behold ! the rocky wall entire Is bathed, through all its breadth and height, In one wide flood of liquid fire ! Mephistophelbs. Does not Lord Mammon bravely light His palace for the May-day night ? 'Tis lucky we are here so early — The guests are coming, by their hurly-burly. Faust. How the sharp night wind whistles past — With what a gust it cut my neck just now ! Mkphistopheles. To the old rock's stout ribs you must hold fast, Or they may plunge you in the gulf below. Black clouds obscure the struggling light, Deepening the darkness of the night. How the roaring tempest howls Through the thunder-blasted trees ; How it scares the screaming owls, Flitting fast before the breeze : , The stately oaks its strength has bowed, And prostrate stretched the pillars proud Of the forest-palaces ! — Hark! how the crackling boughs are breaking, And how the straining trunks are quaking) The roots, their firm foundations rifted, Now, groaning, quit their rocky hold, The crasltng forests are uplifted. And dova the rushing whirlwind rolled. The shivereX fragments loudly crash, As headlong^lown the abyss they dash ; Crags, forests — one wild ruin all, , Commingle in their mighty fall ; ' Above, beneath us, far and near, A charmed melody we hear — Yes, the mountain-land along Streams a wild and witching 'song. ' Y.