As when from ruddy clay he took his name;

And, sooth to say, remains a riddle, just

As much as when you shaped him from the dust.

Perhaps a little better he had thriven,

Had he not got the show of glimmering light from heaven:

He calls it reason, and it makes him free

To be more brutish than a brute can be;

He is, methinks, with reverence of your grace,

Like one of the long-leggèd race

Of grasshoppers that leap in the air, and spring,

And straightway in the grass the same old song they sing;

’Twere well that from the grass he never rose,

On every stubble he must break his nose!

The Lord.

The Lord.

Hast thou then nothing more to say?

And art thou here again to-day

To vent thy grudge in peevish spite

Against the earth, still finding nothing right?

Mephistopheles.

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