Doctor Faustus

Scholar. Come gentlemen, let us go visit Faustus, For such a dreadful night was never seen Since first the world’s creation did begin! Such fearful shrieks and cries were never heard! Pray heaven, the doctor have escaped the danger. Scholar. O, help us heaven, see, here are Faustus’ limbs All torn asunder by the hand of death!

As every Christian heart laments to think on, Yet for he was a scholar once admired For wondrous knowledge in our German schools, We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial; And all the students, clothed in mourning black, Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight And burnèd is Apollo’s laurel bough That sometime grew within this learnèd man. Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall, Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise Only to wonder at unlawful things, Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits To practice more than heavenly power permits.