_Alvar._ Turn not thy face that way, my father! hide, Oh hide it from his eye! Oh let thy joy Flow in unmingled stream through thy first blessing. [_both kneel to VALDEZ._ _Valdez._ My Son! My Alvar! bless, Oh bless him, heaven! _Teresa._ Me too, my Father? _Valdez._ Bless, Oh, bless my children! [_both rise._ _Alvar._ Delights so full, if unalloyed with grief, Were ominous. In these strange dread events Just Heaven instructs us with an awful voice, That Conscience rules us e'en against our choice. Our inward monitress to guide or warn, If listened to; but if repelled with scorn, At length as dire Remorse, she reappears, Works in our guilty hopes, and selfish fears! Still bids, Remember! and still cries, Too late! And while she scares us, goads us to our fate. Remorse. THE PICCOLOMINI[598:1] OR, THE FIRST PART OF WALLENSTEIN A DRAMA TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION It was my intention to have prefixed a Life of Wallenstein to this translation; but I found that it must either have occupied a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of the publication, or have been merely a meagre catalogue of events narrated not more fully than they already are in the Play itself. The recent translation, likewise, of Schiller's _History of the Thirty Years' War_ diminished the motives thereto. In the translation I endeavoured to render my Author literally wherever I was not prevented by absolute differences of idiom; but I am conscious that in two or three short passages I have been guilty of dilating the original; and, from anxiety to give the full meaning, have weakened the force. In the metre I have availed myself of no other liberties than those which Schiller had permitted to himself, except the occasional breaking-up of the line by the substitution of a trochee for an iambus; of which liberty, so frequent in our tragedies, I find no instance in these dramas. S. T. COLERIDGE. FOOTNOTES: