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,
between the ancient ballad and the modern, as revived and recreated by
Goethe and Schiller, is, that the former is a simple narrative, and the
latter a narrative which conveys some intellectual idea--some dim, but
important truth. The one has but the good faith of the minstrel, the