et their state, and join the cry.
"With laurel wreaths his brows be crown'd,
Let throng to throng his triumph tell;
Hail him all Rhodes!"--the Master frown'd,
And raised his hand--and silence fell.

"Well," said that solemn voice, "thy hand
From the wild-beast hath freed the land.
An idol to the People be!
A foe our Order frowns on thee!
For in thy heart, superb and vain,
A hell-worm laidlier than the slain,
To discord which engenders death,
Poisons each thought with baleful breath!
That hell-worm is the stubborn Will--
Oh! What were man and nations worth
If each his own desire fulfil,
And law be banish'd from the earth?

"_Valour_ the Heathen gives to story--
_Obedience_ is the Christian's glory;
And on that soil our Saviour-God
As the meek low-born mortal trod.
We the Apostle-knights were sworn
To laws thy daring laughs to scorn--
Not _fame_, but _duty_ to fulfil--
Our noblest offering--man's wild will.
Vain-glory doth thy soul betray--
Begone--thy conquest is thy loss:
No breast too haughty to obey,
Is worthy of the Christian's cross!"

From their cold awe the crowds awaken,
As with some storm the halls are shaken;
The noble brethren plead for grace--
Mute stands the doom'd, with downward face;
And mutely loosen'd from its band
The badge, and kiss'd the Master's hand,
And meekly turn'd him to depart:
A moist eye follow'd, "To my heart
Come back, my son!"--the Master cries:
"Thy grace a harder fight obtains;
When Valour risks the Christian's prize,
Lo, how Humility regains!"

[In the ballad just presented to the reader, Schiller designed, as he
wrote to Goethe, to depict the old Christian chivalry--half-knightly,
half-monastic. The attempt is strikingly successful; and, even in so
humble a translation, the unadorned simplicity and earnest vigour of a
great poet, enamoured of his subject, may be sufficiently visible to a
discerning critic. "The Fight of the Dragon" appears to us the most
spirited and nervous of all Schiller's ballads, with the single
exception of "The Diver;" and if its interest is less intense than that
of the matchless "Diver," and its descriptions less poetically striking
and effective, its interior meaning or philosophical conception is at
once more profound and more elevated. The main distinction, indeed,