302 
The knights and squires, who stood around, 
Heard him, but utter’d not a sound ; 
Tho’ they mark the sinking of the cup, 
No one of them cares to fish it up. 
A third time the king exclaims with a frown, 
“Ts no one so brave as to venture downe” 
Yet silent as before they stood ; 
When a fair page of noble blood 
Steps from among the fault’ring band ; 
His girdle and mantle he casts on the strand; 
And all the men and women amaz’d, 
On the lovely youth admiring gaz’d. 
And while he walks to the cliff’s brow, 
Looking down on the gulf below, 
Charybdis gave back bellowing 
The waters she’d been swallowing ; 
As with the noise of distant thunder 
Her foaming womb was rent asunder, 
It billows, it hisses, it seethes, and it roars, 
As when water on burning forests showers; 
‘To heaven the recking surges spray ; 
Wave pushes wave in endless fray, 
Exhaustless teeming, full and free, 
As would the sea bring forth a sea. 
At length the wild force dies away, 
And black, amid the foaming spray, 
And bottomless, as were it the path to hell, 
A growing chasm absorbs the swell ; 
And down the murky tunnel’s yawn, 
Eddying the rushing waves are drawn. 
Quick, ere the waters again are abroad, 
The youth commends himself to God. 
Around is heard a shriek of dismay, 
And already the whirlpool has borne him 
away ; 
The throat mysteriously closes o’er, 
And the bold swimmer is seen no more. 
Stiller becomes the watery abyss, 
Climbs from the deep. a hollower hiss ; 
The howlings more faintly die away. 
All wait in anxious terrific delay, 
And lips of many with trembling tell: 
“Thou lofty-spirited youth, farewell! 
“ Were it the crown that you had thrown, 
And said; Whoever brings me the crown 
Shall wear it, and be my king and lord, 
I would not fetch the dear reward. 
What's hid in the howling deep below 
No living soul shall ever know. 
“The whirlpool has seized on many a ship, 
And dragg’d it headlong into the deep ; 
But only a keel, or a splinter’d mast, 
From the all-swallowing grave have past.” 
Nowshriller and nearer the dashing is heard, 
Like winds when the coming storm is fear'd. 
It billows, it hisses, it seethes, and it roars, 
Itrushes and gushes, and dashes and pours. 
Wave pushes wave in endless fray ; 
To heaven the recking surges spray, 
And with the noise of distant thunder, 
Bellowing the dark womb bursts asunder. 
And lo! the swelling billows upon, 
Something uplifts itself, white as a swan, 
The German Student —Schiller continued. 
[May f, 
Andanarm,and a glittering shoulder is bare; 
It rows with force and busy care ; 
And’tis he! and highin his left hand held up, 
He flourishes, joyfully beckoning, the cup. 
With breathings long and deep he wins his 
way, . _ [day, 
And drinks the air, and greets the light of 
With frolic and clapping one cries to 
another : 
“ He lives! He is there! The abyss, could 
not smother ! 
The brave one was allowed to save 
His soul alive from the jaws of the grave.” 
He lands; the shouting choir surround ; 
At the king’s feet he sinks on the ground, 
And kneeling reaches back the cup. 
The monarch graciously lifts him up, 
Beckons his daughter so fair and so fine, 
Who fills the goblet with sparkling wine, 
And the page drank, and thus began. 
“‘ Long live the king! He well may be gay 
Who breathes the rosy light of day; 
Yonder lie horrors dark and dense ; 
Let no man tempt God’s providence, 
And never, never seek to know 
What graciously is veil’d below. 
« As had I fallen in air, it drags 
Me swiftly down—from between the crags 
New wildly boisterous fountains gush. 
The mingling force of the double rush 
T could not withstand; the eddy was strong, 
Like a top, it whirl’d me giddy along. 
“¢ Then God, to whom in my terrible need 
I cried for pity and help, gave heed, 
And show’d projecting trom beneath 
A rock which I seiz’d, and escaped from 
death. 
There hung the cup on a coral steep, 
Else it had dropt to the bottomless deep. 
Far underneath it lay below, 
Gleaming with dim and purple glow, 
Where to the ear tho’ all may sleep, 
The eye beheld amid the deep 
How salamanders, dragons, snakes, 
Were crawling in these hellish lakes, 
“In swarthy mixture here they throng, 
Or glide in griesly groups along, 
The sword-fish, the keen crocodile, 
And the sea-serpent’s sinuous file, 
And grinning with their triple teeth at me, 
Wide-throated sharks, hyenas of the sea. 
«There hung I long—in conscious fear— 
No human arm of help was near ; 
While forms of fright around me glare, 
The only feeling bosom there ; 
Below the reach of human ear, | 
Or human voice—in dumb despair. | 
f 
} 
‘¢ A griesly monster toward me swims, 
Moving at once a hundred limbs, 
And:snaps—in terror I let go 
From my faint grasp the coral bough, 
Down which I was clambering—then the 
surge 
Seiz’d me, but sav'd me—I could now 
emerge,” 
The 
