O lente, lente currite noctis equi:
[Slowly, slowly run, O horses of the night:]
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul—half a drop: ah, my Christ!

These lines occur at the climax of Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy about the scholar-magician Doctor Faustus. Having made a pact with Lucifer for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, Faustus reaches the final hour when the term expires. Alone, he watches time closing in—measured by the stars and the striking clock—and tries to delay the night that will deliver him to damnation. The Latin apostrophe to the “horses of the night” echoes classical poetry and underscores his desperate wish to slow the cosmos itself. The vision of Christ’s blood in the heavens marks a last, anguished turn toward repentance that comes too late.

The passage dramatizes a mind caught between metaphysical terror and belated hope. Faustus’ plea for the night to “run slowly” is not merely fear of death but fear of moral consequence: time is the mechanism of judgment. The juxtaposition of cosmic order (“The stars move still”) with personal panic shows how indifferent the universe seems to his crisis. His cry that “one drop” of Christ’s blood could save him expresses the Christian doctrine of redemption, yet his inability to grasp it—“Who pulls me down?”—suggests spiritual paralysis, despair, and self-division. The lines crystallize the play’s central tension between human aspiration, repentance, and the irrevocability of chosen actions.