Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/304

288 cries of woe, sweeps about in the outlawed town
 * "Her eyes madly rolling,
 * Her hair wildly flying,"

as the picture indicates. Our great Schiller has exalted her in more attractive form in one of his sweetest poems. Here she laments to the Pythian god, with the keenest cutting tones of grief, that fearful fate which he holds over his priestess. Once I had to declaim in school in public trial that poem, and I stopped and could get no further than the words
 * "What avails to lift the curtain,
 * Hiding danger dire and dread ?
 * Life's an error that is certain,
 * Knowledge puts us with the dead."

is the beautiful Helen, whose whole history I cannot tell, or make clear; for then I must really begin with Leda's egg. Her titular father was called Tyndarus, but her real and secret begetter was a god, who in