[The original of the story on which Schiller has founded this ballad, matchless perhaps for the power and grandeur of its descriptions, is to be found in Kircher. According to the true principles of imitative art, Schiller has preserved all that is striking in the legend, and ennobled all that is common-place. The name of the Diver was Nicholas, surnamed the Fish. The King appears, according to Hoffmeister's probable conjectures, to have been either Frederic I. or Frederic II., of Sicily. Date from 1295 to 1377.] "Oh, where is the knight or the squire so bold, As to dive to the howling charybdis below?-- I cast in the whirlpool a goblet of gold, And o'er it already the dark waters flow; Whoever to me may the goblet bring, Shall have for his guerdon that gift of his king." He spoke, and the cup from the terrible steep, That, rugged and hoary, hung over the verge Of the endless and measureless world of the deep, Swirl'd into the maëlstrom that madden'd the surge. "And where is the diver so stout to go-- I ask ye again--to the deep below?" And the knights and the squires that gather'd around, Stood silent--and fix'd on the ocean their eyes; They look'd on the dismal and savage Profound, And the peril chill'd back every thought of the prize. And thrice spoke the monarch--"The cup to win, Is there never a wight who will venture in?" And all as before heard in silence the king-- Till a youth with an aspect unfearing but gentle, 'Mid the tremulous squires--stept out from the ring, Unbuckling his girdle, and doffing his mantle; And the murmuring crowd as they parted asunder, On the stately boy cast their looks of wonder. As he strode to the marge of the summit, and gave One glance on the gulf of that merciless main; Lo! the wave that forever devours the wave Casts roaringly up the charybdis again; And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, Rushes foamingly forth from the heart of the gloom. And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars,[6] As when fire is with water commix'd and contending, And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never-ending. And it never _will_ rest, nor from travail be free, Like a sea that is laboring the birth of a sea. Yet, at length, comes a lull O'er the mighty commotion, As the whirlpool sucks into black smoothness the swell Of the white-foaming breakers--and cleaves thro' the ocean A path that seems winding in darkness to hell. Round and round whirl'd the waves-deeper and deeper still driven, Like a gorge thro' the mountainous main thunder-riven!