If there is a man alive today, with the intelligence, will, and ego,
to make a pack with the Devil...
can anyone doubt who that would be? Seriously.
According to Goethe, it is definitely Donald Trump:
I am too old to live for folly,
Too young, to wish for nothing more.
Am I content with all creation?
Renounce! renounce! Renunciation--
Give over toying with thy sorrow
Which like a vulture feeds upon thy heart;
Thou shalt, in the worst company, to-morrow
Feel that with men a man thou art.
Yet I do not exactly intend
Among the canaille to plant thee.
I'm none of your magnates, I grant thee;
Yet if thou art willing, my friend,
Through life to jog on beside me,
Thy pleasure in all things shall guide me,
To thee will I bind me,
A friend thou shalt find me,
And, e'en to the grave,
Shalt make me thy servant, make me thy slave!
And in return what service shall I render?
There's ample grace--no hurry, not the least.
No, no, the devil is an egotist,
And does not easily "for God's sake" tender
That which a neighbor may assist.
Speak plainly the conditions, come!
'Tis dangerous taking such a servant home.
I do thy service here, agree, but over yonder, thou shalt find me,
Then thou shalt do as much for me.
I care not much what's over yonder:
When thou hast knocked this world asunder,
Come if it will the other may!
Up from this earth my pleasures all are streaming,
Down on my woes this earthly sun is beaming;
Let me but end this fit of dreaming,
Then come what will, I've nought to say.
I'll hear no more of barren wonder
If in that world they hate and love,
And whether in that future yonder
There's a Below and an Above.
Bind thyself to me, and by this indenture
Thou shalt enjoy with relish keen
Fruits of my arts that man had never seen.
And what hast thou to give, poor devil?
Was e'er a human mind, upon its lofty level,
Conceived of by the like of thee?
Yet hast thou food that brings satiety,
Not satisfaction; gold that reftlessly,
Like quicksilver, melts down within
The hands; a game in which men never win;
A maid that, hanging on my breast,
Ogles a neighbor with her wanton glances;
Of fame the glorious godlike zest,
That like a short-lived meteor dances--
Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot,
And trees from which new green is daily peeping!
Such a requirement scares me not;
Such treasures have I in my keeping.
Yet shall there also come a time, good friend,
When we may feast on good things at our leisure.
If ever I lie content upon a lounge of pleasure--
Then let there be of me an end!
When thou with flattery can cajole me,
Till I self-satisfied shall be,
When thou with pleasure can fool me,
Be that the last of days for me!
I lay the wager!
Done!
Now, once for all, pleasure is not the question.
I'm sworn to passion's whirl, the agony of bliss,
The lover's hate, the sweets of bitterness.
My heart, no more by pride of science driven,
Shall open wide to let each sorrow enter,
And all the good that to man's race is given,
I will enjoy it to my being's centre,
Through life's whole range, upward and downward sweeping,
Their weal and woe upon my bosom heaping,
Thus in my single self their selves all comprehending
And with them in a common shipwreck ending.
O trust me, since I have fallen from heaven,
Have chewed this tough meat many a thousand year,
No man digests the ancient leaven,
No mortal, from the cradle to the bier.
Trust one of us, the whole, creation
To God alone belongs by right;
_He has in endless day his habitation,
_Us He hath made for utter night,
_You for alternate dark and light.
I will make America great again!
Only despise all human wit and lore,
The highest flights that thought can soar--
Let but the lying spirit blind thee,
And with his spells of witchcraft bind thee,
Into my snare the victim creeps.--
To him has destiny a spirit given,
That unrestrainedly still onward sweeps,
To scale the skies long since hath striven,
And all earth's pleasures overleaps.
He shall through life's wild scenes be driven,
And through its flat unmeaningness,
I'll make him writhe and stare and stiffen,
And midst all sensual excess,
His fevered lips, with thirst all parched and riven,
Insatiably shall haunt refreshment's brink;
And had he not, himself, his soul to Satan given,
Still must he to perdition sink!
