The Robbers

FRANCIS. If you are unwell--or are the least apprehensive of being so-- permit me to defer--I will speak to you at a fitter season.--(Half aside.) These are no tidings for a fee...

The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton," "Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets whic...

CHARLES VON M. The glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out, and now they substitute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire which will not so much as light a pipe. The pr...

AMELIA. Away! Oh! what a loving, compassionate father, who abandons his son a prey to wolves and monsters! In his own comfortable home he pampers himself with delicious wines an...

FRANCIS. It lasts too long-and the doctor even says is recovering--an old man's life is a very eternity! The course would be free and plain before me, but for this troublesome,...

AMELIA (approaching him on tip-toe). Softly! Softly! He slumbers. (She places herself before him.) How beautiful! how venerable!-- venerable as the picture of a saint. No, I can...

RAZ. Are you come? Is it really you? Oh, let me squeeze thee into a jelly, my dear heart's brother! Welcome to the Bohemian forests! Why, you are grown quite stout and jolly! Yo...

His kisses--oh, what paradise of feeling! E'en as two flames which round each other twine-- Or flood of seraph harp-tones gently stealing In one soft swell, away to realms divine!

HERMANN (scornfully). No ceremony, sir, if you please. For any business we may have to arrange there is room enough between these four walls. At all events I'll just say a few w...

Francis! Francis! Francis! What is all this? Where was thy courage? where thy once so fertile wit? Woe! Woe! And to be betrayed by thy own instruments! The pillars of my good fo...

CHARLES. Here must I lie (throwing himself upon the ground). I feel as if my limbs were all shattered. My tongue is as dry as a potsherd (SCHWEITZER disappears unperceived.) I w...

CHARLES. Hail to thee, Earth of my Fatherland (kisses the earth.) Heaven of my Fatherland! Sun of my Fatherland! Ye meadows and hills, ye streams and woods! Hail, hail to ye all...

AMELIA. Yes, alas, I have proved it. Whatever lives, lives to die in sorrow. We engage our hearts, and grasp after the things of this world, only to undergo the pang of losing t...

DANIEL. Yes, you may deny it, you may dissemble as much as you please? 'Tis very well! very well. For all that you are my dearest, my excellent young master. Good Heaven! that I...

AMELIA. "You are in tears, Amelia!" These were his very words--and spoken with such expressionsuch a voice!--oh, it summoned up a thousand dear remembrances!--scenes of past del...

A merry life we lead, and free, A life of endless fun; Our couch is 'neath the greenwood tree, Through wind and storm we gain our fee, The moon we make our sun. Old Mercury is o...

DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom the grave has long since devoured!...

CHARLES. No! by my enraged soul that shall not be! I will not permit it. He shall bear that enormous load of crime with him into eternity!-- what else should I kill him for?

R. MOOR. Give me thy right hand, Kosinsky--Schweitzer thy left. (He takes their hands, and stands between, them; to KOSINSKY,) Young man, thou art still pure-amongst the guilty...

And I, too, am a good citizen. Do I not fulfil the extremity of the law? Do I not honor the law? Do I not uphold and defend it? I remember speaking to a poor officer on my way h...