Honour to Woman! To her it is given To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven! All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir.... From the bounds of Truth careering, Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps, With each hasty impulse veering Down to Passion's troubled deeps.] [Footnote 109: Ehret die Frauen! Sie stricken die Strümpfe, Wollig und warm, zu durchwaten die Sümpfe, Flicken zerriss'ne Pantalons aus.... Doch der Mann, der tölpelhafte, Find't am Zarten nicht Geschmack; Zum gegohrnen Gerstensafte Raucht er immerfort Taback.] [Footnote 110: "In the waste the Beast is free, And the God upon his throne! Unto each the curb must be But the nature each doth own. Yet the Man--betwixt the two-- Must to man allied belong; Only law and Custom thro' Is the Mortal free and strong." --_Bulwer's Translation._] [Footnote 111: Otto Harnack, "Schiller", page 274.] [Footnote 112: Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn, Das Mägdlein sitzet an Ufers Grün, Es bricht sich die Welle mit Macht, mit Macht, Und sie seufzt hinaus in die finstere Nacht, Das Auge von Weinen getrübet. "Das Herz ist gestorben, die Welt ist leer, Und weiter giebt sie dem Wunsche nichts mehr. Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück, Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück, Ich habe gelebt und geliebet."] CHAPTER XVI Wallenstein So hab' ich Mit eignem Netz verderblich mich umstrickt, Und nur Gewaltthat kann es reiszend lösen. _'Wallenstein'._ The great play which signalizes the return of Schiller to dramatic poetry must be accounted upon the whole his masterpiece. To be sure it is less popular than 'Tell' and less immediately effective than 'Mary Stuart'. It has not the romantic soulfulness of 'The Maid of Orleans', nor the splendid diction of 'The Bride of Messina'. On the stage, too, its effectiveness is somewhat impaired by its great length. But in the imaginative power whereby history is made into drama; in the triumph of artistic genius over a vast and refractory mass of material, and in the skill with which the character of the hero is conceived and denoted, 'Wallenstein' is unrivaled. Well might Goethe pronounce it 'so great that nothing could be compared with it'. Its chief figure is by far the stateliest and most impressive of German tragic heroes.