e forest king,
With a fell and rattling sound;--
And laid him on the ground,
Grommelling!
The king raised his finger; then
Leap'd two LEOPARDS from the den
With a bound;
And boldly bounded they
Where the crouching tiger lay
Terrible!
And he gripped the beasts in his deadly hold;
In the grim embrace they grappled and roll'd;
Rose the lion with a roar!
And stood the strife before;
And the wild-cats on the spot,
From the blood-thirst, wroth and hot,
Halted still!
Now from the balcony above,
A snowy hand let fall a glove:--
Midway between the beasts of prey,
Lion and tiger; there it lay,
The winsome lady's glove!

Fair Cunigonde said, with a lip of scorn,
To the knight DELORGES--"If the love you have sworn
Were as gallant and leal as you boast it to be,
I might ask you to bring back that glove to me!"

The knight left the place where the lady sate;
The knight he has pass'd thro' the fearful gate;
The lion and tiger he stoop'd above,
And his fingers have closed on the lady's glove!

All shuddering and stunn'd, they beheld him there--
The noble knights and the ladies fair;
But loud was the joy and the praise, the while
He bore back the glove with his tranquil smile!

With a tender look in her softening eyes,
That promised reward to his warmest sighs,
Fair Cunigonde rose her knight to grace;
He toss'd the glove in the lady's face!
"Nay, spare me the guerdon, at least," quoth he;
And he left forever that fair ladye!

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE DIVER CARL GEHRTS]

THE DIVER (1797)

A BALLAD

[The original of the story on which Schiller has founded this ballad,
matchless perhaps for the power and grandeur of its descriptions, is
to be found in Kircher. According to the true principles of imitative
art, Schiller has preserved all that is striking in the legend, and
ennobled all that is common-place. The name of the Diver was Nicholas,
surnamed the Fish. The King appears, according to Hoffmeister's
probable conjectures, to have been either Frederic I. or Frederic II.,
of Sicily. Date from 1295 to 1377.]

"Oh, where is the knight or the squire so bold,
As to dive to the howling charybdis below?--
I cast in the whirlpool a goblet of gold,
And o'er it already the dark waters flow;
Whoever to me may the goblet bring,
Shall have for his guerdon that gift of his king."

He spoke,