Schiller: “The Glove”
THE GLOVE (1797)
A Tale
,
Before his lion-court,
To see the gruesome sport,
Sate the king;
Beside him group’d his princely peers;
And dames aloft, in circling tiers,
Wreath’d round their blooming ring.
.
King Francis, where he sate,
Raised a finger–yawn’d the gate,
And, slow from his repose,
A LION goes!
.
Dumbly he gazed around
The foe-encircled ground;
And, with a lazy gape,
He stretch’d his lordly shape,
And shook his careless mane,
And–laid him down again!
.
A finger raised the king–
And nimbly have the guard
A second gate unbarr’d;
Forth, with a rushing spring,
A TIGER sprung!
.
Wildly the wild one yell’d
When the lion he beheld;
And, bristling at the look,
With his tail his sides he strook,
And roll’d his rabid tongue;
,
In many a wary ring
He swept round the 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!
The Knight scorns Cunigonde
