[10] "'At him, good dogs!' she cries, 'at him, good Tigris, Leäne, Sphinx, Melampus, Dirke, and Hyrkaon!' and, shouting thus, she rushes madly at him with the pack, and, like a dog among the dogs, catches him by the plume of his helmet and pulls him down, the earth shuddering at his fall. One has him by the neck, one by the breast. Weltering in his blood, he touches her soft cheek and cries: 'Penthesilea! sweet love! art thou beside thyself? Is this the bridal festival thou promisedst?' The lioness, the hungry lioness roaring for her prey on the barren plain, would have listened to him--but she--she tears the breastplate from his breast, and sets her teeth deep in his flesh--she and her hounds in rivalry; Oxus and Sphinx have him by the right breast, she by the left. When I arrived, the blood was streaming from her mouth and hands." [11] "Many is the woman who, with her arms round her lover's neck, has said: 'I love thee so, that I could eat thee.' If the fool tried, she was disgusted. It was not so with me, beloved. When I hung upon thy neck I said it not; I did it. I was not so mad as I seemed to thee to be." [12] "Kisses and bites--the two words rhyme (in German); and when one loves with all one's heart, it often happens that one confuses them." [13] Jul. Schmidt, _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_, ii. 307. [14] "Art thou not conscious of him in the world, his work? Dost thou not see him in the sunset glow That falls so softly on the silent woods? Dost thou not hear him in the rippling stream, And in the nightingale's melodious notes? Is it in vain the heaven-high mountains speak, And hissing foam of rock-torn waterfall? When bright the sun into his temple shines, And all created life pulsates with joy, And magnifies its great Creator's name, Dost thou not seek the shrine of thy pure heart And worship there thine idol?" [15] "Thou art armed in adamant, thou holy one, against every approach of evil. The highly-favoured one embraced by thee leaves thee still innocent and pure." [16] "They write their plans for liberating Germany in cipher, and send them to each other by messengers whom the Romans catch and hang; they meet in the dusk, they eat, they drink, and sleep, when night comes, with their wives.... The hope that Augustus may die to-morrow leads them to live on thus, covered with shame, from one week to another." [17] "How it all happened I'll tell you again; to-day I'm in too great a hurry." [18] Adolf Wilbrandt, _Heinrich von Kleist_, 1863; Otto Brehm, _Heinrich von Kleist_, 1884. [19] Hitzig, _Lebens-Abriss Zacharias Werners_, 1823; Schütz, _Zacharias Werner, Biographie und Charakteristik_, 1841. [20] "Life is the destiny of everything; through death comes birth; not one grain of seed is lost. He who has struggled through blood and darkness has overcome. All hail, O bleeding knight!"