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FAUSTUS. My heart is harden'd, I cannot repent;
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven:
Swords, poisons, halters, and envenom'd steel
Are laid before me to despatch myself;
And long ere this I<74> should have done the deed,
Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair.
Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander's love and Oenon's death?
And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephistophilis?
Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
I am resolv'd; Faustus shall not repent.--
Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again,
And reason of divine astrology.
Speak, are there many spheres above the moon?
Are all celestial bodies but one globe,
As is the substance of this centric earth?
MEPHIST. As are the elements, such are the heavens,
Even from the moon unto th' empyreal orb,
Mutually folded in each other's spheres,
And jointly move upon one axletree,
Whose termine<75> is term'd the world's wide pole;
Nor are the names of Saturn, Mars, or Jupiter
Feign'd, but are erring<76> stars.
FAUSTUS. But have they all one motion, both situ et tempore?
MEPHIST. All move from east to west in four-and-twenty
hours upon the poles of the world; but differ in their motions
upon the poles of the zodiac.
FAUSTUS. These slender questions Wagner can decide:
Hath Mephistophilis no greater skill?
Who knows not the double motion<77> of the planets?
That the first is finish'd in a natural day;
The second thus; Saturn in thirty years; Jupiter in twelve;
Mars in four; the Sun, Venus, and Mercury in a year; the Moon
in twenty-eight days.
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