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In his ballad of The Diver Schiller tells how a squire leaps into a dangerous whirlpool in order to win a woman—at first symbolized by a goblet. Horror-struck, he describes the perils of the deep by which he is doomed to be engulfed:
Yet at length comes a lull o'er the mighty commotion,As the whirlpool sucks into black smoothness the swellOf the white-foaming breakers—and cleaves through the oceanA path that seems winding in darkness to hell.Round and round whirled the waves—deeper and deeper still driven,Like a gorge through the mountainous main thunder-riven!Happy they whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice,The air and the sky that to mortals are given!May the horror below never more find a voice—