This is rather the sabbat of the second Faust, than the other;
A rhythmic sabbat — rhythmic as a lay
Is rhythmic. Imagine a garden by Lenotre —
         Correct, ridiculous and gay.

Flower beds in circle — in their midst, the fountains; walks
Arrow straight and sylvan gods in marble; gods marine
In bronze; with here and there a Venus coyly draped;
         The trees aligned; a bowling green;

Chestnut trees; and flowering plants forming a leafy dune;
Some dwarfed rose bushes set about with loving care;
Beyond, the yews well placed in triangle. The moon
         Of summer shining softly there.

Midnight sounds, and wakens in the depth of this old park
A melancholy air — a heavy, slow and sadly listless air —
A huntsman's lay, sweet, low and melancholy as
         The hunting song in Tannhauser.

Then comes a veiled and distant chant of horns, whose tenderness
Of sense quite overcomes the soul's distress with sweet accords,
Harmoniously discordant in their wild excess;
         And to this call of horns

There comes a band of white-robed, slowly moving forms
Diaphanous, on which the moon beams seem to play
With opal tints among the shadows of the branches green —
         A Watteau dreamed of by Raffet.

And mingling with the soft green shadows of the trees,
With gestures languishing and full of grief profound,
These forms amid the bronzes begin a mystic dance —
         A dance wherein they circle slowly round.

These swaying spectres — are they nothing but the thought
Of some poor drunken bard — or the remorse in his bewildered head —
These spectres that with rhythmic tread dance on the turf?
         Or are they simply spirits of the dead?

Are they then thy regrets, O dreamer who invites this hell, —
Thy thoughts, or thy remorse — say? — these creatures spurned?
These spectres that some maddening impulse sways;
         Or have the dead to madmen turned?

No matter! they are always here, these phantoms of the brain,
Making their mournful round and winding ever on;
Whirling like atoms in the clear rays of the sun,
         That in a moment suddenly are gone.

Pallid and damp, the dawn o'ercomes them one by one —
The horns and all — they pass with coming day —
Till nothing more remains — nothing — but a garden by Lenotre,
         Correct, ridiculous and gay.