WHY run so fast the hurtling crowd
Adown the long streets, roaring loud?
Is Rhodes on fire?—more fast the throng,
Wedg’d close and closer, storms along.
High o’er the train, he seems to lead,
Behold a Knight on warlike Steed!
Behind is dragged a wondrous load;
Beneath what Monster groans the road?
With wide jaws like the Crocodile,
In shape a Dragon to the sight,
All eyes in wonder gaze the while—
Now on the Monster, now the Knight.
—Friedrich von Schiller, “The Fight with the Dragon”
translated by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 1852