Faust: Margaret's Question

Margaret:

Promise me, Heinrich!

Faust:

If I can!

Margaret:

Say, as regards religion, how you feel.
I know that you are a dear, good man,
Yet, for you, it seems, it has no appeal.

Faust:

Leave that alone, child! You feel I’m kind to you:
For Love I’d give my blood, my life too.
I’ll rob no man of his church and faith.

Margaret:

That’s not right, we must have faith.

Faust:

Must we?

Margaret:

Ah, if in this I was only fluent!
You don’t respect the Holy Sacrament.

Faust:

I respect it.

Margaret:

Without wanting it, though. You’ve passed
So many years without confession, or mass.
Do you believe in God?

Faust:

My darling, who dare say:
‘I believe in God’?
Choose priest to ask, or sage,
The answer would seem a joke, would it not,
Played on whoever asks?

Margaret:

So, you don’t believe?

Faust:

Sweetest being, don’t misunderstand me!
Who dares name the nameless?
Or who dares to confess:
‘I believe in him’?
Yet who, in feeling,
Self-revealing,
Says: ‘I don’t believe’?
The all-clasping,
The all-upholding,
Does it not clasp, uphold,
You: me, itself?
Don’t the heavens arch above us?
Doesn’t earth lie here under our feet?
And don’t the eternal stars, rising,
Look down on us in friendship?
Are not my eyes reflected in yours?
And don’t all things press
On your head and heart,
And weave, in eternal mystery,
Visibly: invisibly, around you?
Fill your heart from it: it is so vast,
And when you are blessed by the deepest feeling,
Call it then what you wish,
Joy! Heart! Love! God!
I have no name
For it! Feeling is all:
Names are sound and smoke,
Veiling Heaven’s bright glow.

— Faust: Scene XVI: Martha’s Garden (3415-3455)