[1] Whence this trembling, this nameless horror, when thy loving arms encircle me? Is it because an oath, which, remember, even a thought is sufficient to break, has forced strange fetters on thee? Because a ceremony, which the laws have decreed to be sacred, has hallowed an accidental, grievous crime? Nay--fearlessly defy a covenant of which blushing nature repents. O tremble not!--thine oath was a sin; perjury is the sacred duty of the repentant sinner; the heart thou gavest away at the altar was mine; Heaven does not play with human happiness. [2] Goethe, _Tag- und Jahreshefte_, 1802; G. Waitz, _Caroline_, ii. 207; _Goethe-Jahrbuch_, vi. 59, &c. [3] "Your opinion of _Alarkos_ is mine; nevertheless I think that we must dare everything, outward success or non-success being of no consequence whatever. Our gain seems to me to lie principally in the fact that we accustom our actors to repeat, and ourselves to hear, this extremely accurate metre."--_Goethe_. [4] "Their colours sing, their forms resound; each, according to its form and colour finds voice and speech.... Colour, fragrance, song, proclaim themselves one family." II HÖLDERLIN Outside the group which represents the transition from the Hellenism of Goethe and Schiller to Romanticism stands a solitary figure, that of Hölderlin, one of the noblest and most refined intellects of the day. Although their contemporary, he was a pioneer of the German Romanticists, in much the same way as Andre Chenier, another Hellenist, was a pioneer of French Romanticism. He was educated with the future philosopher of the Romantic School, Schelling, and with Hegel, the great thinker, who came after Romanticism, and he was the friend of both of these, but had made acquaintance with none of the Romanticists proper when insanity put an end to his intellectual activity. Hölderlin was born in 1770, and became insane in 1802. Hence, although he survived himself forty years, his life as an author is very little longer than Hardenberg's or Wackenroder's.