STUSSI.
If you've a trouble, dash it from your heart!
Take what Heaven sends! The times are heavy now,
And we must snatch at pleasure as it flies.
Here 'tis a bridal, there a burial.
TELL.
And oft the one close on the other treads.
STUSSI.
So runs the world we live in. Everywhere
Mischance befalls and misery enough.
In Glarus there has been a landslip, and
A whole side of the Glarnisch has fallen in.
TELL.
How! Do the very hills begin to quake?
There is stability for nought on earth.
STUSSI.
Of strange things, too, we hear from other parts.
I spoke with one but now, from Baden come,
Who said a knight was on his way to court,
And, as he rode along, a swarm of wasps
Surrounded him, and settling on his horse,
So fiercely stung the beast, that it fell dead,
And he proceeded to the court on foot.
TELL.
The weak are also furnish'd with a sting.
[Armgart enters with several children, and places herself at the entrance of the pass.]
STUSSI.
Tis thought to bode disaster to the land,—
Some horrid deeds against the course of nature.
TELL.
Why, every day brings forth such fearful deeds;
There needs no prodigy to herald them.
STUSSI.
Ay, happy he who tills his field in peace,
And sits at home untroubled with his kin.