Chapter 13

[56] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the Son of Earth--so long as the earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,--so the soul contends in vain with evil--the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antaeus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth, and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.

[57] By this Schiller informs us elsewhere that he does not mean death alone; but that the thought applies equally to every period of life when we can divest ourselves of the body and perceive or act as pure spirits; we are truly then under the influence of the sublime.

[58] Duke Bernard of Weimar, one of the heroes of the Thirty Years' war.

[59] These verses were sent by Schiller to the then Electoral High Chancellor, with a copy of his "William Tell."

[60] Addressed in the original to Mdlle. Slevoigt, on her marriage to Dr. Sturm.

[61] This was the title of the publication in which many of the finest of Schiller's "Poems of the Third Period" originally appeared.

End of Project Gutenberg's Poems of The Third Period, by Frederich Schiller