Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes / Fiske, John, 1842-1901

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Title: The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI.
       Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. In Twenty
       Volumes


Author: Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

Release Date: May 29, 2004 [EBook #12473]

Language: English

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VOLUME VI




HEINRICH HEINE

FRANZ GRILLPARZER

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN





THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH


Patrons' Edition

IN TWENTY VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED


1914

CONTRIBUTORS AND TRANSLATORS

VOLUME VI




CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI


HEINRICH HEINE

  The Life of Heinrich Heine. By William Guild Howard

  Poems

  Dedication. Translated by Sir Theodore Martin

  Songs. Translators: Sir Theodore Martin, Charles Wharton Stork, T.
  Brooksbank

  A Lyrical Intermezzo. Translators: T. Brooksbank, Sir Theodore
  Martin, J.E. Wallis, Richard Garnett, Alma Strettell, Franklin Johnson,
  Charles G. Leland, Charles Wharton Stork

  Sonnets. Translators: T. Brooksbank, Edgar Alfred Bowring

  Poor Peter. Translated by Alma Strettell

  The Two Grenadiers. Translated by W.H. Furness

  Belshazzar. Translated by John Todhunter

  The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar. Translated by Sir Theodore Martin

  The Return Home. Translators: Sir Theodore Martin. Kate
  Freiligrath-Kroeker, James Thomson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Twilight. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

  Hail to the Sea. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

  In the Harbor. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

  A New Spring. Translators: Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker, Charles Wharton
  Stork

  Abroad. Translated by Margaret Armour

  The Sphinx. Translated by Sir Theodore Martin

  Germany. Translated by Margaret Armour

  Enfant Perdu. Translated by Lord Houghton

  The Battlefield of Hastings. Translated by Margaret Armour

  The Asra. Translated by Margaret Armour

  The Passion Flower. Translated by Charles Wharton Stork


  Prose

  The Journey to the Harz. Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

  Boyhood Days. Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

  English Fragments--Dialogue on the Thames; London; Wellington.
   Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

  Lafayette. Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

  The Romantic School. Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland

  The Rabbi of Bacharach. Translated by Charles Godfrey Leland


FRANZ GRILLPARZER

  The Life of Franz Grillparzer. By William Guild Howard

  Medea. Translated by Theodore A. Miller

  The Jewess of Toledo. Translated by George Henry Danton and Annina
  Periam Danton

  The Poor Musician. Translated by Alfred Remy

  My Journey to Weimar. Translated by Alfred Remy


LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

  Beethoven as a Letter Writer. By Walter R. Spalding

  Beethoven's Letters. Translated by J.S. Shedlock



ILLUSTRATIONS--VOLUME VI


Emperor William I at a Court Reception-Frontispiece

Heinrich Heine. By W. Krauskopf

Heinrich Heine. By E. Hader

The Lorelei Fountain in New York. By Herter

Spring's Awakening. By Ludwig von Hofmann

Flower Fantasy. By Ludwig von Hofmann

Poor Peter. By P. Grotjohann

The Two Grenadiers. By P. Grotjohann

Rocky Coast. By Ludwig von Hofmann

Play of the Waves. By Arnold Boecklin

Market Place, Goettingen

Old Imperial Palace, Goslar

The Witches' Dancing Ground

The Brocken Inn About 1830

The Falls of the Ilse

View from St. Andreasberg

Johann Wilhelm Monument, Duesseldorf

The Duke of Wellington. By d'Orsay

Bacharach on the Rhine

House in Bacharach

Franz Grillparzer

Franz Grillparzer and Kaethi Froehlich in 1823

Grillparzer's House in Spiegelgasse

Grillparzer's Room in the House of the Sisters Froehlich

Franz Grillparzer in His Sixtieth Year

The Grillparzer Monument at Vienna

Medea. By Anselm Feuerbach

Medea. From the Grillparzer Monument at Vienna

Beethoven. By Max Klinger




THE LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE

BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M.
Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

I.

The history of German literature makes mention of few men more
self-centered and at the same time more unreserved than Heinrich
Heine. It may be said that everything which Heine wrote gives us, and
was intended to give us, first of all some new impression of the
writer; so that after a perusal of his works we know him in all his
strength and weakness, as we can know only an amiable and
communicative egotist; moreover, besides losing no opportunity for
self-expression, both in and out of season, Heine published a good
deal of frankly autobiographical matter, and wrote memoirs, only
fragments of which have come down to us, but of which more than has
yet appeared will perhaps ultimately be made accessible. Heine's life,
then, is to us for the most part an open book. Nevertheless, there are
many obscure passages in it, and there remain many questions not to be
answered with certainty, the first of which is as to the date of his
birth. His own statements on this subject are contradictory, and the
original records are lost. But it seems probable that he was born on
the thirteenth of December, 1797, the eldest child of Jewish parents
recently domiciled at Duesseldorf on the Rhine.

The parentage, the place, and the time were almost equally significant
aspects of the constellation under which young Harry Heine--for so he
was first named--began his earthly career. He was born a Jew in a
German city which, with a brief interruption, was for the first
sixteen years of his life administered by the French. The citizens of
Duesseldorf in general had little reason, except for high taxes and the
hardships incident to conscription in the French armies, to complain
of the foreign dominion. Their trade flourished, they were given
better laws, and the machinery of justice was made much less
cumbersome than it had been before. But especially the Jews hailed the
French as deliverers; for now for the first time they were relieved of
political disabilities and were placed upon a footing of equality with
the gentile population. To Jew and gentile alike the military
achievements of the French were a source of satisfaction and
admiration; and when the Emperor of the French himself came to town,
as Heine saw him do in 1810, we can easily understand how the
enthusiasm of the boy surrounded the person of Napoleon, and the idea
that he was supposed to represent, with a glamor that never lost its
fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the
French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the
intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader
in whose army every common soldier carried a field marshal's baton in
his knapsack. If later we find Heine mercilessly assailing the
repressive and reactionary aristocracy of Germany, we shall not
lightly accuse him of lack of patriotism. He could not be expected to
hold dear institutions of which he felt only the burden, without a
share in the sentiment which gives stability even to institutions that
have outlived their usefulness. Nor shall we call him a traitor for
loving the French, a people to whom his people owed so much, and to
whom he was spiritually akin.

French influences, almost as early as Hebrew or German, were among the
formative forces brought to bear upon the quick-witted but not
precocious boy. Heine's parents were orthodox, but by no means bigoted
Jews. We read with amazement that one of the plans of the mother,
ambitious for her firstborn, was to make of him a Roman Catholic
priest. The boy's father, Samson Heine, was a rather unsuccessful
member of a family which in other representatives--particularly
Samson's brother Salomon in Hamburg--attained to wealth and prominence
in the world of finance.

[Illustration: W. KRAUSKOPF HEINRICH HEINE After a Drawing in the
Possession of Mr. Carl Meinert in Dessau]

Samson Heine seems to have been too easy-going, self-indulgent, and
ostentatious, to have made the most of the talents that he
unquestionably had. Among his foibles was a certain fondness for the
pageantry of war, and he was in all his glory as an officer of the
local militia. To his son Gustav he transmitted real military
capacity, which led to a distinguished career and a patent of nobility
in the Austrian service. Harry Heine inherited his father's more
amiable but less strenuous qualities. Inquisitive and alert, he was
rather impulsive than determined, and his practical mother had her
trials in directing him toward preparation for a life work, the
particular field of which neither she nor he could readily choose.
Peira, or Betty, Heine was a stronger character than her husband; and
in her family, several members of which had taken high rank as
physicians, there had prevailed a higher degree of intellectual
culture than the Heines had attained to. She not only managed the
household with prudence and energy, but also took the chief care of
the education of the children. To both parents Harry Heine paid the
homage of true filial affection; and of the happiness of the home
life, _The Book Le Grand_ and a number of poems bear unmistakable
witness. The poem "My child, we were two children" gives a true
account of Harry and his sister Charlotte at play.

In Duesseldorf, Heine's formal education culminated in attendance in
the upper classes of a Lyceum, organized upon the model of a French
Lycee and with a corps of teachers recruited chiefly from the ranks of
the Roman Catholic clergy. The spirit of the institution was
rationalistic and the discipline wholesome. Here Heine made solid
acquisitions in history, literature, and the elements of philosophy.
Outside of school, he was an eager spectator, not merely of stirring
events in the world of politics, but also of many a picturesque
manifestation of popular life--a spectator often rather than a
participant; for as a Jew he stood beyond the pale of both the German
and the Roman Catholic traditions that gave and give to the cities of
the Rhineland their characteristic naive gaiety and harmless
superstition. Such a poem as _The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_ would be
amazing as coming from an unbeliever, did we not see in it evidence of
the poet's capacity for perfect sympathetic adoption of the spirit of
his early environment. The same is true of many another poetic
expression of simple faith, whether in Christianity or in the
mythology of German folk-lore.

Interest in medieval Catholicism and in folk-lore is one of the most
prominent traits in the Romantic movement, which reached its
culmination during the boyhood of Heine. The history of Heine's
connection with this movement is foreshadowed by the circumstances of
his first contact with it. He tells us that the first book he ever
read was _Don Quixote_ (in the translation by Tieck). At about the
same time he read _Gulliver's Travels_, the tales of noble robbers
written by Goethe's brother-in-law, Vulpius, the wildly fantastic
stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Schiller's _Robbers_; but also Uhland's
ballads, and the songs collected by Arnim and Brentano in _The Boy's
Magic Horn_. That is to say: At the time when in school a critical and
skeptical mind was being developed in him by descendants of the age of
enlightenment, his private reading led him for the most part into the
region of romanticism in its most exaggerated form. At the time,
furthermore, when he took healthy romantic interest in the picturesque
Dusseldorf life, his imagination was morbidly stimulated by furtive
visits to a woman reputed to be a witch, and to her niece, the
daughter of a hangman. His earliest poems, the _Dream Pictures_,
belong in an atmosphere charged with witchery, crime, and the
irresponsibility of nightmare. This coincidence of incompatible
tendencies will later be seen to account for much of the mystery in
Heine's problematic character.

It having been decided, perhaps because the downfall of Napoleon shut
the door of all other opportunity, that Heine should embark upon a
mercantile career, he was given a brief apprenticeship, in 1815 at
Frankfurt, in the following years at Hamburg, under the immediate
patronage of his uncle Salomon who, in 1818, even established the
young poet in a dry goods business of his own. The only result of
these experiments was the demonstration of Heine's total inaptitude
for commercial pursuits. But the uncle was magnanimous and offered his
nephew the means necessary for a university course in law, with a view
to subsequent practice in Hamburg. Accordingly, after some brushing up
of Latin at home, Heine in the fall of 1819 was matriculated as a
student at the University of Bonn.

In spite of failure to accomplish his immediate purpose, Heine had not
sojourned in vain at Hamburg. He had gained the good will of an
opulent uncle whose bounty he continued almost uninterruptedly to
enjoy to the end of his days. But in a purpose that lay much nearer to
his heart he had failed lamentably; for, always sensitive to the
charms of the other sex, Heine had conceived an overpowering passion
for his cousin Amalie, the daughter of Salomon, only to meet with
scornful rebuffs at the hands of the coquettish and worldly-minded
heiress. There is no reason to suppose that Amalie ever took her
cousin's advances seriously. Her father certainly did not so take
them. On the other hand, there is equally little reason to doubt the
sincerity and depth of Heine's feelings, first of unfounded hope, then
of persistent despair that pursued him in the midst of other
occupations and even in the fleeting joys of other loves. The most
touching poems included among the _Youthful Sorrows_ of his first
volume were inspired by Amalie Heine.

At Bonn Heine was a diligent student. Though never a roysterer, he
took part in various extra-academic enterprises, was a member of the
_Burschenschaft_, that democratic-patriotic organization so gravely
suspected by the reactionary governments, and made many friends. He
duly studied history and law; he heard Ernst Moritz Arndt interpret
the _Germania_ of Tacitus; but more especially did he profit by
official and personal relations with A.W. Schlegel, who taught Heine
what he himself knew best, namely, the secret of literary form and the
art of metrical expression.

The fall of 1820 saw Heine at Goettingen, the Hanoverian university to
which, shortly before, the Americans Ticknor and Everett had repaired
and at which in that very year Bancroft had attained his degree of
doctor of philosophy. Here, however, Heine was repelled by the
aristocratic exclusiveness of the Hanoverian squires who gave the tone
to student society, as well as by the mummified dryness of the
professors. In marked contrast to the patriotic and romantic spirit of
Bonn he noted here with amazement that the distinguished Germanist
Benecke lectured on the _Nibelungenlied_ to an auditory of nine. His
own residence was destined this time to be brief; for serious quarrels
coming to the ear of the faculty, he was, on January 23, 1821,
advised to withdraw; and in April he enrolled himself as a student at
the University of Berlin.

The next three years were filled with manifold activities. As a
student Heine was deeply impressed by the absolute philosophy
expounded by Hegel; as a Jew he lent a willing hand to the endeavors
of an association recently founded for the amelioration of the social
and political condition of the Hebrews; in the drawing room of Rahel
Levin, now the wife of Varnhagen von Ense, he came in touch with
gifted men and women who were ardent admirers of Goethe, and some of
whom, a quarter of a century before, had befriended Friedrich
Schlegel; and in the subterranean restaurant of Lutter and Wegener he
joined in the revels of Hoffmann, Grabbe, and other eccentric
geniuses. Heine now began to be known as a man of letters. After
having, from 1817 on, printed occasional poems in newspapers and
magazines, he published in December, 1821 (with the date 1822), his
first volume, entitled simply _Poems_; he wrote newspaper articles on
Berlin and on Poland, which he visited in the summer of 1822; and in
the spring of 1823 he published _Tragedies together with a Lyrical
Intermezzo_--two very romantic and undramatic plays in verse,
separated in the volume by a short series of lyrical poems.

Meanwhile Amalie Heine had been married and Harry's parents had moved
to Lueneburg. Regret for the loss of Amalie soon gave way to a new
passion for a very young girl, whose identity remains uncertain, but
who was probably Amalie's little sister Therese. In any case, Heine
met the new love on the occasion of a visit to Lueneburg and Hamburg in
the spring of 1823, and was haunted by her image during the summer
spent at Cuxhaven. Here Heine first saw the sea. In less exalted moods
he dallied with fisher maidens; he did not forget Amalie; but the
youthful grace and purity of Therese dominate most of the poems of
this summer. The return from the watering place gave Heine the title
_The Return Home_ for this collection of pieces which, when published
in 1826, was dedicated to Frau Varnhagen von Ense.

Uncle Salomon, to whom the _Tragedies_ had been affectionately
inscribed, was not displeased with the growing literary reputation of
his nephew. But he saw no sense in the idea that Heine already
entertained of settling in Paris. He insisted that the young man
should complete his studies; and so, in January, 1824, Heine once more
betook himself to Goettingen, where on the twenty-first of July, 1825,
he was duly promoted _Doctor utriusque Juris_. In the summer of 1824
he made the trip through the Hartz mountains which served as the basis
of _The Journey to the Hartz_; immediately before his promotion he
submitted to baptism in the Lutheran church as Christian Johann
Heinrich Heine.

Submission is the right word for this conversion. It was an act of
expediency such as other ambitious men found unavoidable in those
days; but Heine performed it in a spirit of bitterness caused not so
much by a sense of apostasy as by contempt for the conventional
Christianity that he now embraced. There can be no sharper contrast
than that presented by such a poem as _The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_ and
sundry satirical pieces not included in this volume.

Two vacations at Norderney, where Heine renewed and deepened
acquaintance with his beloved North Sea, not very resolute attempts to
take up the practice of law in Hamburg, a trip to London, vain hopes
of a professorship in Munich, a sojourn in Italy, vacillations between
Hamburg, Berlin, and the North Sea, complete the narrative of Heine's
movements to the end of the first period of his life. He was now Heine
the writer: poet, journalist, and novelist. _The Journey to the
Hartz_, first published in a magazine, _Der Gesellschafter_, in
January and February, 1826, was issued in May of that year by Campe in
Hamburg, as the first volume of _Pictures of Travel_, beginning with
the poems of _The Return Home_ and concluding with the first group of
hymns to the North Sea, written at Norderney in the previous year.
_Pictures of Travel II_, issued in 1827, consisted of the second cycle
of poems on the _North Sea_, an account in prose of life on the
island, entitled _Norderney, The Book Le Grand_, to which epigrams by
Immermann were appended, and extracts from _Letters from Berlin_
published in 1822. _Pictures of Travel III_ (1830) began with
experiences in Italy, but degenerated into a provoked but ruthless
attack upon Platen. _Pictures of Travel IV_ (1831) included _English
Fragments_, the record of Heine's observations in London, and _The
City of Lucca_, a supplementary chapter on Italy. In October, 1827,
Heine collected under the title _Book of Songs_ nearly all of his
poems written up to that time.

The first period in Heine's life closes with the year 1831. The
Parisian revolution of July, 1830, had turned the eyes of all Europe
toward the land in which political experiments are made for the
benefit of mankind. Many a German was attracted thither, and not
without reason Heine hoped to find there a more promising field for
the employment of his talents than with all his wanderings he had
discovered in Germany. Toward the end of May, 1831, he arrived in
Paris, and Paris was thenceforth his home until his death on the
seventeenth of February, 1856.

II

In the preface to the second edition of the _Book of Songs_, written
at Paris in 1837, Heine confessed that for some time past he had felt
a certain repugnance to versification; that the poems therewith
offered for the second time to the public were the product of a time
when, in contrast to the present, the flame of truth had rather heated
than clarified his mind; and expressed the hope that his recent
political, theological, and philosophical writings--all springing from
the same idea and intention as the poems--might atone for any weakness
in the poems. Heine wrote poetry after 1831, and he wrote prose before
1831; but in a general way what he says of his two periods is correct:
before his emigration he was primarily a poet, and afterwards
primarily a critic, journalist, and popular historian. In his first
period he wrote chiefly about his own experiences; in his second,
chiefly about affairs past and present in which he was interested.

As to the works of the first period, we might hesitate to say whether
the _Pictures of Travel_ or the _Book of Songs_ were the more
characteristic product. In whichever way our judgment finally
inclined, we should declare that the _Pictures of Travel_ were
essentially prosified poems and that the poems were, in their
collected form, versified _Pictures of Travel_; and that both,
moreover, were dominated, as the writings after 1831 were dominated,
by a romantically tinged longing for individual liberty.

The title _Pictures of Travel_, to which Heine gave so definite a
connotation, is not in itself a true index to the multifarious
contents of the series of traveler's notes, any more than the volumes
taken each by itself were units. Pages of verse followed pages of
prose; and in the _Journey to the Hartz_, verse interspersed in prose
emphasizes the lyrical character of the composition. Heine does indeed
give pictures of some of the scenes that he visits; but he also
narrates his passage from point to point; and at every point he sets
forth his recollections, his thoughts, his dreams, his personal
reaction upon any idea that comes into his head; so that the
substance, especially of the _Journey to the Hartz_, is less what was
to be seen in the Hartz than what was suggested to a very lively
imagination; and we admire the agility with which the writer jumps
from place to place quite as much as the suppleness with which he can
at will unconditionally subject himself to the genius of a single
locality. For Heine is capable of writing straightforward descriptive
prose, as well-ordered and as matter-of-fact as a narrative of
Kleist's. But the world of reality, where everything has an assignable
reason for its being and doing, is not the world into which he most
delights to conduct us. This world, on the contrary, is that in which
the water "murmurs and rustles so wonderfully, the birds pour forth
broken love-sick strains, the trees whisper as if with a thousand
maidens' tongues, the odd mountain flowers peep up at us as if with a
thousand maidens' eyes, stretching out to us their curious, broad,
drolly scalloped leaves; the sunrays flash here and there in sport,
the herbs, as though endowed with reason, are telling one another
their green legends, all seems enchanted"--in other words, a
wonderland disturbed by no doubts on the part of a rationalistic
Alice. And a further secret of this fascinating, though in the long
run exasperating style, is the sublime audacity with which Heine
dances now on one foot and now on the other, leaving you at every
moment in amused perplexity, whether you shall next find him standing
firmly on mother earth or bounding upward to recline on the clouds.

"A mixture of description of nature, wit, poetry, and observation a la
Washington Irving" Heine himself called the _Journey to the Hartz_.
The novelty lay in the mixture, and in the fact that though the
ingredients are, so to speak, potentized in the highest degree, they
are brought to nearly perfect congruence and fusion by the
irresistible solvent of the second named. The _Journey to the Hartz_
is a work of wit, in the present sense, and in the older sense of
that word. It is a product of superior intelligence--not a _Sketch
Book_, but a single canvas with an infinitude of details; not a
_Sentimental Journey_--although Heine can outdo Sterne in
sentimentality, he too persistently outdoes him also in satire--the
work, fragmentary and outwardly formless, is in essence thoroughly
informed by a two-fold purpose: to ridicule pedantry and philistinism,
and to extol nature and the life of those uncorrupted by the world.

A similar unity is unmistakable in the _Book of Songs_. It would be
difficult to find another volume of poems so cunningly composed. If we
examine the book in its most obvious aspect, we find it beginning with
_Youthful Sorrows_ and ending with hymns to the North Sea; passing,
that is to say, from the most subjective to the most objective of
Heine's poetic expressions. The first of the _Youthful Sorrows_ are
_Dream Pictures_, crude and grotesque imitations of an inferior
romantic _genre_; the _North Sea Pictures_ are magnificent attempts in
highly original form to catch the elusive moods of a great natural
element which before Heine had played but little part in German
poetry. From the _Dream Pictures_ we proceed to _Songs_ (a very simple
love story told in forms as nearly conventional as Heine ever used),
to _Romances_ which, with the notable exception of _The Two
Grenadiers_ and _Belshazzar_, are relatively feeble attempts at the
objectivation of personal suffering; and thence to _Sonnets_, direct
communications to particular persons. Thereupon follow the _Lyrical
Intermezzo_ and the _Return Home_, each with a prologue and an
epilogue, and with several series of pieces which, like the _Songs_
above mentioned, are printed without titles and are successive
sentences or paragraphs in the poet's own love story. This he tells
over and over again, without monotony, because the story gains in
significance as the lover gains in experience, because each time he
finds for it a new set of symbols, and because the symbols become more
and more objective as the poet's horizon broadens. Then come a few
pieces of religious content (culminating in _The Pilgrimage to
Kevlaar_), the poems in the _Journey to the Hartz_ (the most striking
of which are animated by the poetry of folk-lore)--these poems clearly
transitional to the poetry of the ocean which Heine wrote with such
vigor in the two cycles on the North Sea. The movement is a steady
climax.

The truth of the foregoing observations can be tested only by an
examination of the entire _Book of Songs_. The total effect is one of
arrangement. The order of the sections is chronological; the order of
the poems within the sections is logical; and some poems were altered
to make them fit into the scheme. Each was originally the expression
of a moment; and the peculiarity of Heine as a lyric poet is his
disposition to fix a moment, however fleeting, and to utter a feeling,
of however slight consequence to humanity it might at first blush seem
to be. In the _Journey to the Hartz_ he never lost an opportunity to
make a point; in his lyrical confessions he suppressed no impulse to
self-revelation; and seldom did his mastery of form fail to ennoble
even the meanest substance.

Some of Heine's most perfect products are his smallest. Whether,
however, a slight substance can be fittingly presented only in the
briefest forms, or a larger matter calls for extended treatment, the
method is the same, and the merit lies in the justness and
suggestiveness of details. Single points, or points in juxtaposition
or in succession, not the developed continuity of a line, are the
means to the effect which Heine seeks. Connecting links are left to be
supplied by the imagination of the reader. Even in such a narrative
poem as _Belshazzar_ the movement is _staccato_; we are invited to
contemplate a series of moments; and if the subject is impiety and
swift retribution, we are left to infer the fact from the evidence
presented; there is neither editorial introduction nor moralizing
conclusion. Similarly with _The Two Grenadiers_, a presentation of
character in circumstance, a translation of pictorial details into
terms of action and prophecy; and most strikingly in _The Pilgrimage
to Kevlaar_, a poem of such fundamentally pictorial quality that it
has been called a triptych, three depicted scenes in a little
religious drama.

It is in pieces like these that we find Heine most successfully making
of himself the interpreter of objects in the outside world. The number
of such objects is greater than is everywhere believed--though
naturally his success is surest in the case of objects congenial to
him, and the variety of these is not great. Indeed, the outside world,
even when he appears to treat it most objectively, proves upon closer
examination to be in the vast majority of cases only a treasure-trove
of symbols for the expression of his inner self. Thus, _Poor Peter_ is
the narrative of a humble youth unfortunate in love, but poor Peter's
story is Heine's; otherwise, we may be sure, Heine would not have
thought it worth the telling. Nothing could seem to be less the
property of Heine than _The Lorelei_; nevertheless, he has given to
this borrowed subject so personal a turn that instead of the siren we
see a human maiden, serenely indifferent to the effect of her charms,
which so take the luckless lover that, like the boatman, he, Heine, is
probably doomed ere long to death in the waves.

Toward the outside world, then, Heine's habitual attitude is not that
of an interpreter; it is that of an artist who seeks the means of
expression where they may be found. He does not, like Goethe and
Moerike, read out of the phenomena of nature and of life what these
phenomena in themselves contain; he reads into them what he wishes
them to say. _The Book of Songs_ is a human document, but it is no
document of the life of humanity; it is a collection of kaleidoscopic
views of one life, a life not fortified by wholesome cooeperation with
men nor nourished with the strength of nature, but vivifying nature
with its own emotions. Heine has treated many a situation with
overwhelming pathos, but none from which he was himself so completely
absent as Moerike from the kitchen of The _Forsaken Maiden_. Goethe's
"Hush'd on the hill" is an apostrophe to himself; but peace which the
world cannot give and cannot take away is the atmosphere of that poem;
whereas Heine's "The shades of the summer evening lie" gets its
principal effectiveness from fantastic contributions of the poet's own
imagination.

The length to which Heine goes in attributing human emotions to nature
is hardly to be paralleled before or since. His aim not being the
reproduction of reality, nor yet the objectivation of ideas, his
poetry is essentially a poetry of tropes-that is, the conception and
presentation of things not as they are but as they may be conceived to
be. A simple illustration of this method may be seen in _The
Herd-Boy_. Uhland wrote a poem on a very similar subject, _The Boy's
Mountain Song_. But the contrast between Uhland's hardy, active,
public-spirited youth and Heine's sleepy, amorous individualist is no
more striking than the difference between Uhland's rhetorical and
Heine's tropical method. Heine's poem is an elaboration of the single
metaphor with which it begins: "Kingly is the herd-boy's calling." The
poem _Pine and Palm_, in which Heine expresses his hopeless separation
from the maiden of whom he dreams--incidentally attributing to Amalie
a feeling of sadness and solitude to which she was a stranger--is a
bolder example of romantic self-projection into nature. But not the
boldest that Heine offers us. He transports us to India, and there--

  The violets titter, caressing,
    Peeping up as the planets appear,
  And the roses, their warm love confessing,
    Whisper words, soft perfumed, to each ear.

Nor does he allow us to question the occurrence of these marvels; how
do we know what takes place on the banks of the Ganges, whither we are
borne on the wings of song? This, indeed, would be Heine's answer to
any criticism based upon Ruskin's notion as to the "pathetic fallacy."
If the setting is such as to induce in us the proper mood, we readily
enter the non-rational realm, and with credulous delight contemplate
wonders such as we too have seen in our dreams; just as we find the
romantic syntheses of sound and odor, or of sound and color,
legitimate attempts to express the inexpressible. The atmosphere of
prose, to be sure, is less favorable to Heine's habitual indulgence in
romantic tropes.

Somewhat blunted by over-employment is another romantic instrument,
eminently characteristic of Heine, namely, irony. Nothing could be
more trenchant than his bland assumption of the point of view of the
Jew-baiter, the hypocrite, or the slave-trader. It is as perfect as
his adoption of childlike faith in _The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar_. Many a
time he attains an effect of ironical contrast by the juxtaposition of
incongruous poems, as when a deification of his beloved is followed by
a cynical utterance of a different kind of love. But often the
incongruity is within the poem itself, and the poet, destroying the
illusion of his created image, gets a melancholy satisfaction from
derision of his own grief. This procedure perfectly symbolizes a
distracted mind; it undoubtedly suggests a superior point of view,
from which the tribulations of an insignificant individual are seen to
be insignificant; but in a larger sense it symbolizes the very
instability and waywardness of Heine himself. His emotions were
unquestionably deep and recurrent, but they were not constant. His
devotion to ideals did not preclude indulgence in very unideal
pleasures; and his love of Amalie and Therese, hopeless from the
beginning, could not, except in especially fortunate moments, avoid
erring in the direction either of sentimentality or of bitterness. But
Heine was too keenly intellectual to be indulgent of sentimentality,
and too caustic to restrain bitterness. Hence the bitter-sweet of many
of his pieces, so agreeably stimulating and so suggestive of an
elastic temperament.

There is, however, a still more pervasive incongruity between this
temperament and the forms in which it expressed itself. Heine's love
poems--two-thirds of the _Book of Songs_--are written in the very
simplest of verses, mostly quatrains of easy and seemingly inevitable
structure. Heine learned the art of making them from the _Magic Horn_,
from Uhland, and from Eichendorff, and he carried the art to the
highest pitch of virtuosity. They are the forms of the German
Folk-song, a fit vehicle for homely sentiments and those elemental
passions which come and go like the tide in a humble heart, because
the humble heart is single and yields unresistingly to their flow. But
Heine's heart was not single, his passion was complex, and the
greatest of his ironies was his use of the most unsophisticated of
forms for his most sophisticated substances. This, indeed, was what
made his love poetry so novel and so piquant to his contemporaries;
this is one of the qualities that keep it alive today; but it is a
highly individual device which succeeded only with this individual;
and that it was a device adopted from no lack of capacity in other
measures appears from the perfection of Heine's sonnets and the
incomparable free rhythmic verses of the _North Sea_ cycles.

Taken all in all, _The Book of Songs_ was a unique collection, making
much of little, and making it with an amazing economy of means.

III

Heine's first period, to 1831, when he was primarily a literary
artist, nearly coincides with the epoch of the Restoration
(1815-1830). Politically, this time was unproductive in Germany, and
the very considerable activity in science, philosophy, poetry,
painting, and other fine arts stood in no immediate relation to
national exigencies. There was indeed plenty of agitation in the
circles of the _Burschenschaft_, and there were sporadic efforts to
obtain from reluctant princes the constitutions promised as a reward
for the rising against Napoleon; but as a whole the people of the
various states seemed passive, and whatever was accomplished was the
work of individuals, with or without royal patronage, and, in the
main, in continuation of romantic tendencies. But with the Revolution
of July, 1830, the political situation in Germany became somewhat more
acute, demands for emancipation took more tangible form, and the
so-called "Young Germans "--Wienbarg, Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, Boerne,
and others-endeavored in essays, novels, plays, and pamphlets to stir
up public interest in questions of political, social, and religious
reform.

Many passages in Heine's _Pictures of Travel_ breathe the spirit of
the Young German propaganda--the celebrated confession of faith, for
example, in the _Journey to the Hartz_, in which he declares himself a
knight of the holy spirit of iconoclastic democracy. In Paris he
actively enlisted in the cause, and for about fifteen years continued,
as a journalist, the kind of expository and polemic writing that he
had developed in the later volumes of the _Pictures of Travel_.
Regarding himself, like many an expatriate, as a mediator between the
country of his birth and the country of his adoption, he wrote for
German papers accounts of events in the political and artistic world
of France, and for French periodicals more ambitious essays on the
history of religion, philosophy, and recent literature in Germany.
Most of the works of this time were published in both French and
German, and Heine arranged also for the appearance of the _Pictures of
Travel_ and the _Book of Songs_ in French translations. To all intents
and purposes he became a Frenchman; from 1836 or 1837 until 1848 he
was the recipient of an annual pension of 4,800 francs from the French
government; he has even been suspected of having become a French
citizen. But he in no sense curbed his tongue when speaking of French
affairs, nor was he free from longing to be once more in his native
land.

In Germany, however, he was commonly regarded as a traitor; and at the
same time the Young Germans, with the more influential of whom he soon
quarreled, looked upon him as a renegade; so that there was a peculiar
inappropriateness in the notorious decree of the Bundesrat at
Frankfurt, voted December 10, 1835, and impotently forbidding the
circulation in Germany of the writings of the Young Germans: Heine,
Gutzkow, Laube, Wienbarg, and Mundt--in that order. But the occupants
of insecure thrones have a fine scent for the odor of sedition, and
Heine was an untiring sapper and miner in the modern army moving
against the strongholds of aristocrats and priests. A keen observer in
Hamburg who was resolved, though not in the manner of the Young
Germans, to do his part in furthering social reform, Friedrich Hebbel,
wrote to a friend in March, 1836: "Our time is one in which action
destined to be decisive for a thousand years is being prepared. What
artillery did not accomplish at Leipzig must now be done by pens in
Paris."

During the first years of his sojourn in Paris Heine entered gleefully
into all the enjoyment and stimulation that the gay capital had to
offer. "I feel like a fish in water" is a common expression of
contentment with one's surroundings; but when one fish inquires after
the health of another, he now says, Heine told a friend, "I feel like
Heine in Paris." The well-accredited German poet quickly secured
admission to the circle of artists, journalists, politicians, and
reformers, and became a familiar figure on the boulevards. In October,
1834, be made the acquaintance of a young Frenchwoman, Crescence
Eugenie Mirat, or Mathilde, as he called her, and fell violently in
love with her. She was a woman of great personal attractiveness, but
entirely without education, frivolous, and passionate. They were soon
united; not for long, Heine thought, and he made efforts to escape
from her seductive charms, but ineffectually; and like Tannhaeuser, he
was drawn back to his Frau Venus with an attachment passing all
understanding. From December, 1835, Heine regarded her as his wife,
and in 1841 they were married. But Mathilde was no good housekeeper;
Heine was frequently in financial straits; he quarreled with his
relatives, as well as with literary adversaries in Germany and
France; and only after considerable negotiation was peace declared,
and the continuation of a regular allowance arranged with Uncle
Salomon.

[Illustration: HEINRICH HEINE E. HADER]

Moreover, Heine's health was undermined. In the latter thirties he
suffered often from headaches and afflictions of the eyes; in the
middle of the forties paralysis of the spinal cord began to manifest
itself; and for the last ten years of his life he was a hopelessly
stricken invalid, finally doomed for five years to that "mattress
grave" which his fortitude no less than his woeful humor has
pathetically glorified. His wife cared for him dutifully, he was
visited by many distinguished men of letters, and in 1855 a
ministering angel came to him in the person of Elise von Krinitz
("Camille Selden") whom he called "_Die Mouche_" and for whom he wrote
his last poem, _The Passion Flower_, a kind of apology for his life.

Meantime contentions, tribulations, and a wasting frame seemed only to
sharpen the wits of the indomitable warrior. _New Songs_ (1844)
contains, along with negligible cynical pieces, a number of love songs
no whit inferior to those of the _Book of Songs_, romances, and
scorching political satires. The _Romanzero_ (1851) is not unfairly
represented by such a masterpiece as _The Battlefield of Hastings_.
And from this last period we have two quasi-epic poems: _Atta Troll_
(1847; written in 1842) and _Germany_ (1844), the fruit of the first
of Heine's two trips across the Rhine.

Historically and poetically, _Atta Troll_ is one of the most
remarkable of Heine's works. He calls it _Das letzte freie Waldlied
der Romantik_ ("The last free forest-song of romanticism.") Having for
its principal scene the most romantic spot in Europe, the valley of
Roncesvaux, and for its principal character a dancing bear, the
impersonation of those good characters and talentless men who, in the
early forties, endeavored to translate the prose of Young Germany into
poetry, the poem flies to the merriest, maddest height of romanticism
in order by the aid of magic to kill the bear and therewith the vogue
of poetry degraded to practical purposes. Heine knew whereof he
spoke; for he had himself been a mad romanticist, a Young German, and
a political poet; and he was a true prophet; for, though he did not
himself enter the promised land, he lived to see, in the more refined
romanticism of the Munich School and the poetic realism of Hebbel and
Ludwig, the dawn of a new day in the history of German literature.

Heine did not enter the promised land. Neither can we truthfully say
that he saw it as it was destined to be. His eye was on the present,
and in the present he more clearly discerned what ought not to be than
what gave promise of a better future. In the war for the liberation of
humanity he professed to be, and he was, a brave soldier; but he
lacked the soldier's prime requisite, discipline. He never took a
city, because he could not rule his spirit. Democracy was inscribed
upon his banner, sympathy for the disenfranchised bound him to it, but
not that charity which seeketh not her own, nor the loyalty that
abides the day when imperfection shall become perfection. Sarcasm was
his weapon, ridicule his plan of campaign, and destruction his only
accomplishment.

We shall not say that the things destroyed by Heine deserved a better
fate. We shall not think of him either as a leader or as a follower in
a great national movement. He was not the one man of his generation
through whom the national consciousness, even national discontent,
found expression; he was the man whose self-expressions aroused the
widest interest and touched the tenderest chords. To be called perhaps
an alien, and certainly no monumental German character, Heine
nevertheless made use, with consummate artistry, of the fulness of
German culture at a time when many of the after-born staggered under
the weight of a heritage greater than they could bear.

[Illustration: THE LORELEI FOUNTAIN In NEW YORK BY HERTER]




HEINRICH HEINE

       *       *       *       *       *

DEDICATION[1] (1822)

  I have had dreams of wild love wildly nursed,
    Of myrtles, mignonette, and silken tresses,
    Of lips, whose blames belie the kiss that blesses,
  Of dirge-like songs to dirge-like airs rehearsed.

  My dreams have paled and faded long ago,
    Faded the very form they most adored,
    Nothing is left me but what once I poured
  Into pathetic verse with feverish glow.

  Thou, orphaned song, art left. Do thou, too, fade!
    Go, seek that visioned form long lost in night,
    And say from me--if you upon it light--
  With airy breath I greet that airy shade!

       *       *       *       *       *

SONGS (1822)

1 [2]

  Oh, fair cradle of my sorrow,
    Oh, fair tomb of peace for me,
  Oh, fair town, my last good-morrow,
    Last farewell I say to thee!

  Fare thee well, thou threshold holy,
    Where my lady's footsteps stir,
  And that spot, still worshipped lowly,
    Where mine eyes first looked on her!

  Had I but beheld thee never,
    Thee, my bosom's beauteous queen,
  Wretched now, and wretched ever,
    Oh, I should not thus have been!

  Touch thy heart?--I would not dare that:
    Ne'er did I thy love implore;
  Might I only breathe the air that
    Thou didst breathe, I asked no more.

  Yet I could not brook thy spurning,
    Nor thy cruel words of scorn;
  Madness in my brain is burning,
    And my heart is sick and torn.

  So I go, downcast and dreary,
    With my pilgrim staff to stray,
  Till I lay my head aweary
    In some cool grave far away.

  2 [3]

  Cliff and castle quiver grayly
    From the mirror of the Rhine
  Where my little boat swims gaily;
    Round her prow the ripples shine.

  Heart at ease I watch them thronging--
    Waves of gold with crisping crest,
  Till awakes a half-lulled longing
    Cherished deep within my breast.

  Temptingly the ripples greet me
    Luring toward the gulf beneath,
  Yet I know that should they meet me
    They would drag me to my death.

  Lovely visage, treacherous bosom,
    Guile beneath and smile above,
  Stream, thy dimpling wavelet's blossom
    Laughs as falsely as my love.

  3[4]

  I despaired at first--believing
    I should never bear it. Now
  I have borne it--I have borne it.
    Only never ask me How.

       *       *       *       *       *

A LYRICAL INTERMEZZO (1822-23)

1[5]

  'Twas in the glorious month of May,
    When all the buds were blowing,
  I felt--ah me, how sweet it was!--
    Love in my heart a-growing.

  'Twas in the glorious month of May,
    When all the birds were quiring,
  In burning words I told her all
    My yearning, my aspiring.

2[6]

  Where'er my bitter tear-drops fall,
    The fairest flowers arise;
  And into choirs of nightingales
    Are turned my bosom's sighs.

  And wilt thou love me, thine shall be
    The fairest flowers that spring,
  And at thy window evermore
    The nightingales shall sing.

3[7]

  The rose and the lily, the moon and the dove,
    Once loved I them all with a perfect love.
  I love them no longer, I love alone
    The Lovely, the Graceful, the Pure, the One
  Who twines in one wreath all their beauty and love,
    And rose is, and lily, and moon and dove.

4[8]

  Dear, when I look into thine eyes,
  My deepest sorrow straightway flies;
  But when I kiss thy mouth, ah, then
  No thought remains of bygone pain!

  And when I lean upon thy breast,
  No dream of heaven could be more blest;
  But, when thou say'st thou lovest me,
  I fall to weeping bitterly.

5[9]

  Thy face, that fair, sweet face I know,
  I dreamed of it awhile ago;
  It is an angel's face, so mild--
  And yet, so sadly pale, poor child!

  Only the lips are rosy bright,
  But soon cold Death will kiss them white,
  And quench the light of Paradise
  That shines from out those earnest eyes.

6[10]

  Lean close thy cheek against my cheek,
  That our tears together may blend, love,
  And press thy heart upon my heart,
  That from both one flame may ascend, love!

[Illustration: SPRING'S AWAKENING _From the Painting by Ludwig von
Hofmann._]

  And while in that flame so doubly bright
  Our tears are falling and burning,
  And while in my arms I clasp thee tight
  I will die with love and yearning.

7[11]

  I'll breathe my soul and its secret
    In the lily's chalice white;
  The lily shall thrill and reecho
    A song of my heart's delight.

  The song shall quiver and tremble,
    Even as did the kiss
  That her rosy lips once gave me
    In a moment of wondrous bliss.

8[12]

  The stars have stood unmoving
    Upon the heavenly plains
  For ages, gazing each on each,
    With all a lover's pains.

  They speak a noble language,
    Copious and rich and strong;
  Yet none of your greatest schoolmen
    Can understand that tongue.

  But I have learnt it, and never
    Can forget it for my part--
  For I used as my only grammar
    The face of the joy of my heart.

9[13]

  On the wings of song far sweeping,
    Heart's dearest, with me thou'lt go
  Away where the Ganges is creeping;
    Its loveliest garden I know--

  A garden where roses are burning
    In the moonlight all silent there;
  Where the lotus-flowers are yearning
    For their sister beloved and fair.

  The violets titter, caressing,
    Peeping up as the planets appear,
  And the roses, their warm love confessing,
    Whisper words, soft-perfumed, to each ear.

  And, gracefully lurking or leaping,
    The gentle gazelles come round:
  While afar, deep rushing and sweeping,
    The waves of the Ganges sound.

  We'll lie there in slumber sinking
    Neath the palm-trees by the stream,
  Rapture and rest deep drinking,
    Dreaming the happiest dream.

10[14]

  The lotos flower is troubled
    By the sun's too garish gleam,
  She droops, and with folded petals
    Awaiteth the night in a dream.

  'Tis the moon has won her favor,
    His light her spirit doth wake,
  Her virgin bloom she unveileth
    All gladly for his dear sake.

  Unfolding and glowing and shining
    She yearns toward his cloudy height;
  She trembles to tears and to perfume
    With pain of her love's delight.

[Illustration: FLOWER FANTASY _Train the Painting by Ludwig von
Hofmann._]

11[15]

  The Rhine's bright wave serenely
    Reflects as it passes by
  Cologne that lifts her queenly
    Cathedral towers on high.

  A picture hangs in the dome there,
    On leather with gold bedight,
  Whose beauty oft when I roam there
    Sheds hope on my troubled night.

  For cherubs and flowers are wreathing
    Our Lady with tender grace;
  Her eyes, cheeks, and lips half-breathing
    Resemble my loved one's face.

12[16]

  I am not wroth, my own lost love, although
  My heart is breaking--wroth I am not, no!
  For all thou dost in diamonds blaze, no ray
  Of light into thy heart's night finds its way.

  I saw thee in a dream. Oh, piteous sight!
  I saw thy heart all empty, all in night;
  I saw the serpent gnawing at thy heart;
  I saw how wretched, O my love, thou art!

13[17]

  When thou shalt lie, my darling, low
    In the dark grave, where they hide thee,
  Then down to thee I will surely go,
    And nestle in beside thee.

  Wildly I'll kiss and clasp thee there,
    Pale, cold, and silent lying;
  Shout, shudder, weep in dumb despair,
    Beside my dead love dying.

  The midnight calls, up rise the dead,
    And dance in airy swarms there;
  We twain quit not our earthly bed,
    I lie wrapt in your arms there.

  Up rise the dead; the Judgment-day
    To bliss or anguish calls them;
  We twain lie on as before we lay,
    And heed not what befalls them.

14[18]

  A young man loved a maiden,
    But she for another has sigh'd;
  That other, he loves another,
    And makes her at length his bride.

  The maiden marries, in anger,
    The first adventurous wight
  That chance may fling before her;
    The youth is in piteous plight.

  The story is old as ages,
    Yet happens again and again;
  The last to whom it happen'd,
    His heart is rent in twain.

15[19]

  A lonely pine is standing
    On the crest of a northern height;
  He sleeps, and a snow-wrought mantle
    Enshrouds him through the night.

  He's dreaming of a palm-tree
    Afar in a tropic land,
  That grieves alone in silence
    'Mid quivering leagues of sand.

16[20]

  My love, we were sitting together
    In a skiff, thou and I alone;
  'Twas night, very still was the weather,
    Still the great sea we floated on.

  Fair isles in the moonlight were lying,
    Like spirits, asleep in a trance;
  Their strains of sweet music were sighing,
    And the mists heaved in an eery dance.

  And ever, more sweet, the strains rose there,
    The mists flitted lightly and free;
  But we floated on with our woes there,
    Forlorn on that wide, wide sea.

17[21]

  I see thee nightly in dreams, my sweet,
    Thine eyes the old welcome making,
  And I fling me down at thy dear feet
    With the cry of a heart that is breaking.

  Thou lookest at me in woful wise
    With a smile so sad and holy,
  And pearly tear-drops from thine eyes
    Steal silently and slowly.

  Whispering a word, thou lay'st on my hair
    A wreath with sad cypress shotten;
  awake, the wreath is no longer there,
    And the word I have forgotten.

       *       *       *       *       *



SONNETS (1822)

TO MY MOTHER

1[22]

  I have been wont to bear my head on high,
    Haughty and stern am I of mood and mien;
    Yea, though a king should gaze on me, I ween,
  I should not at his gaze cast down my eye.
  But I will speak, dear Mother, candidly:
    When most puffed up my haughty mood hath been,
    At thy sweet presence, blissful and serene,
  I feel the shudder of humility.

  Does thy soul all unknown my soul subdue,
  Thy lofty soul that pierces all things through
  And speeds on lightning wings to heaven's blue?
  Or am I racked by what my memories tell
  Of frequent deeds which caused thy heart to swell--
  That beauteous heart which loved me, ah! too well.

2[23]

  With foolish fancy I deserted thee;
  I fain would search the whole world through to learn
  If in it I perchance could love discern,
  That I might love embrace right lovingly.
  I sought for love as far as eye could see,
  My hands extending at each door in turn,
  Begging them not my prayer for love to spurn--
  Cold hate alone they laughing gave to me.
  And ever search'd I after love; yes, ever
  Search'd after love, but love discover'd never,
  And so I homeward went with troubled thought;
  But thou wert there to welcome me again,
  And, ah, what in thy dear eye floated then
  That was the sweet love I so long had sought.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: POOR PETER _From the Painting by P. Grotjohann_]



   POOR PETER[24] (1822)

  1

  Grete and Hans come dancing by,
    They shout for very glee;
  Poor Peter stands all silently,
    And white as chalk is he.

  Grete and Hans were wed this morn,
    And shine in bright array;
  But ah, poor Peter stands forlorn,
    Dressed for a working-day.

  He mutters, as with wistful eyes
    He gazes at them still:
  "'Twere easy--were I not too wise--
    To do myself some ill...."

  2

  "An aching sorrow fills my breast,
    My heart is like to break;
  It leaves me neither peace nor rest,
    And all for Grete's sake.

  "It drives me to her side, as though
    She still could comfort me;
  But in her eyes there's something now
    That makes me turn and flee.

  "I climb the highest hilltop where
    I am at least alone;
  And standing in the stillness there
    I weep and make my moan."

  3

  Poor Peter wanders slowly by;
  So pale is he, so dull and shy,
  The very neighbors in the street
  Turn round to gaze, when him they meet.

  The maids speak low: "He looks, I ween,
  As though the grave his bed had been."
  Ah no, good maids, ye should have said
  "The grave will soon become his bed."

  He lost his sweetheart--so, may be,
  The grave is best for such as he;
  There he may sleep the years away,
  And rest until the Judgment-day.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE TWO GRENADIERS[25] (1822)

  To France were traveling two grenadiers,
    From prison in Russia returning,
  And when they came to the German frontiers,
    They hung down their heads in mourning.

  There came the heart-breaking news to their ears
    That France was by fortune forsaken;
  Scattered and slain were her brave grenadiers,
    And Napoleon, Napoleon was taken.

  Then wept together those two grenadiers
    O'er their country's departed glory;
  "Woe's me," cried one, in the midst of his tears,
    "My old wound--how it burns at the story!"

  The other said: "The end has come,
    What avails any longer living
  Yet have I a wife and child at home,
    For an absent father grieving.

  "Who cares for wife? Who cares for child?
    Dearer thoughts in my bosom awaken;
  Go beg, wife and child, when with hunger wild,
    For Napoleon, Napoleon is taken!

  "Oh, grant me, brother, my only prayer,
    When death my eyes is closing:
  Take me to France, and bury me there;
    In France be my ashes reposing.

  "This cross of the Legion of Honor bright,
    Let it lie near my heart, upon me;
  Give me my musket in my hand,
    And gird my sabre on me.

  "So will I lie, and arise no more,
    My watch like a sentinel keeping,
  Till I hear the cannon's thundering roar,
    And the squadrons above me sweeping.

  "Then the Emperor comes! and his banners wave,
    With their eagles o'er him bending,
  And I will come forth, all in arms, from my grave,
    Napoleon, Napoleon attending!"

[Illustration: THE TWO GRENADIERS _From the Painting by P. Grotjohann_]

       *       *       *       *       *

BELSHAZZAR[26] (1822)

  To midnight now the night drew on;
  In slumber deep lay Babylon.

  The King's house only was all aflare,
  For the King's wild crew were at revel there.

  Up there in the King's own banquet hall,
  Belshazzar held royal festival.

  The satraps were marshaled in glittering line
  And emptied their beakers of sparkling wine.

  The beakers they clinked, and the satraps' hurras
  in the ears of the stiff-necked King rang his praise.

  The King's hot cheeks were with revel dyed,
  The wine made swell his heart with pride.

  Blind madness his haughty stomach spurred,
  And he slandered the Godhead with sinful word,

  And strutting in pride he blasphemed, the crowd
  Of servile courtiers applauding loud.

  The King commanded with haughty stare;
  The slave was gone, and again was there.

  Much wealth of gold on his head bare he;
  'Twas reft from Jehovah's sanctuary.

  And the King took hold of a sacred cup
  With his impious hand, and they filled it up;

  And he drank to the bottom in one deep draught,
  And loud, the foam on his lips, he laughed:

  "Jehovah! Thy glories I spit upon;
  I am the King of Babylon!"

  But scarce had the awful words been said
  When the King's heart withered with secret dread.

  The boisterous laughter was stifled all,
  And corpselike still did wax the hall;

  Lo! lo! on the whited wall there came
  The likeness of a man's hand in flame,

  And wrote, and wrote, in letters of flame,
  And wrote and vanished, and no more came.

  The King stark-staring sat, a-quail,
  With knees a-knocking, and face death-pale,

  The satraps' blood ran cold--none stirred;
  They sat like statues, without a word.

  The Magians came; but none of them all
  Could read those letters of flame on the wall.

  But in that same night of his vaunting vain
  By his satraps' hand was Belshazzar slain.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAAR[27] (1823)

1

  The mother stood at the window;
    Her son lay in bed, alas!
  "Will you not get up, dear William,
    To see the procession pass?"

  "O mother, I am so ailing,
    I neither can hear nor see;
  I think of my poor dead Gretchen,
    And my heart grows faint in me."

  "Get up, we will go to Kevlaar;
    Your book and your rosary take;
  The Mother of God will heal you,
    And cure your heart of its ache."

  The Church's banners are waving,
    They are chanting a hymn divine;
  'Tis at Koeln is that procession,
    At Koeln upon the Rhine.

  With the throng the mother follows;
    Her son she leads with her; and now
  They both of them sing in the chorus,
    "Ever honored, O Mary, be thou!"

2

  The Mother of God at Kevlaar
    Is drest in her richest array;
  She has many a cure on hand there,
    Many sick folk come to her today.

  And her, for their votive offerings,
    The suffering sick folk greet
  With limbs that in wax are molded,
    Many waxen hands and feet.

  And whoso a wax hand offers,
    His hand is healed of its sore;
  And whoso a wax foot offers,
    His foot it will pain him no more.

  To Kevlaar went many on crutches
    Who now on the tight-rope bound,
  And many play now on the fiddle
    Had there not one finger sound.

  The mother she took a wax taper,
    And of it a heart she makes
  "Give that to the Mother of Jesus,
    She will cure thee of all thy aches."

  With a sigh her son took the wax heart,
    He went to the shrine with a sigh;
  His words from his heart trickle sadly,
    As trickle the tears from his eye.

  "Thou blest above all that are blest,
    Thou virgin unspotted divine,
  Thou Queen of the Heavens, before thee
    I lay all my anguish and pine.

  "I lived with my mother at Koeln,
    At Koeln in the town that is there,
  The town that has hundreds many
    Of chapels and churches fair.

  "And Gretchen she lived there near us,
  But now she is dead, well-a-day!
  O Mary! a wax heart I bring thee,
    Heal thou my heart's wound, I pray!

  "Heal thou my heart of its anguish,
    And early and late, I vow,
  With its whole strength to pray and to sing, too,
    'Ever honored, O Mary, be thou!'"

3

  The suffering son and his mother
    In their little bed-chamber slept;
  Then the Mother of God came softly,
    And close to the sleepers crept.

  She bent down over the sick one,
    And softly her hand did lay
  On his heart, with a smile so tender,
    And presently vanished away.

  The mother sees all in her dreaming,
    And other things too she marked;
  Then up from her slumber she wakened,
    So loudly the town dogs barked.

  There lay her son, to his full length
    Stretched out, and he was dead;
  And the light on his pale cheek flitted
    Of the morning's dawning red.

  She folded her hands together,
    She felt as she knew not how,
  And softly she sang and devoutly,
    "Ever honored, O Mary, be thou!"

       *       *       *       *       *

THE RETURN HOME (1823-24)

1[28]

  Once upon my life's dark pathway
    Gleamed a phantom of delight;
  Now that phantom fair has vanished,
    I am wholly wrapt in night.

  Children in the dark, they suffer
    At their heart a spasm of fear;
  And, their inward pain to deaden,
    Sing aloud, that all may hear.

  I, a madcap child, now childlike
    In the dark to sing am fain;
  If my song be not delightsome,
    It at least has eased my pain.

2[29]

  We sat at the fisherman's cottage,
    And gazed upon the sea;
  Then came the mists of evening,
    And rose up silently.

  The lights within the lighthouse
    Were kindled one by one,
  We saw still a ship in the distance
    On the dim horizon alone.

  We spoke of tempest and shipwreck,
    Of sailors and of their life,
  And how 'twixt clouds and billows
    They're tossed, 'twixt joy and strife.

  We spoke of distant countries
    From North to South that range,
  Of strange fantastic nations,
    And their customs quaint and strange.

  The Ganges is flooded with splendor,
    And perfumes waft through the air,
  And gentle people are kneeling
    To Lotos flowers fair.

  In Lapland the people are dirty,
    Flat-headed, large-mouthed, and small;
  They squat round the fire and, frying
    Their fishes, they shout and they squall.

  The girls all gravely listened,
    Not a word was spoken at last;
  The ship we could see no longer,
    Darkness was settling so fast.

3[30]

  You lovely fisher-maiden,
    Bring now the boat to land;
  Come here and sit beside me,
    We'll prattle hand in hand.

  Your head lay on my bosom,
    Nor be afraid of me;
  Do you not trust all fearless
    Daily the great wild sea?

  My heart is like the sea, dear,
    Has storm, and ebb, and flow,
  And many purest pearl-gems
    Within its dim depth glow.

4[31]

  My child, we were two children,
    Small, merry by childhood's law;
  We used to creep to the henhouse,
    And hide ourselves in the straw.

  We crowed like cocks, and whenever
    The passers near us drew--
  "Cock-a-doodle!" They thought
    'Twas a real cock that crew.

  The boxes about our courtyard
    We carpeted to our mind,
  And lived there both together--
    Kept house in a noble kind.

  The neighbor's old cat often
    Came to pay us a visit;
  We made her a bow and courtesy,
    Each with a compliment in it.

  After her health we asked,
    Our care and regard to evince--
  (We have made the very same speeches
    To many an old cat since).

  We also sat and wisely
    Discoursed, as old folks do,
  Complaining how all went better
    In those good old times we knew--

  How love, and truth, and believing
    Had left the world to itself,
  And how so dear was the coffee,
    And how so rare was the pelf.

  The children's games are over,
    The rest is over with youth--
  The world, the good games, the good times,
    The belief, and the love, and the truth.

5[32]

  E'en as a lovely flower,
    So fair, so pure thou art;
  I gaze on thee, and sadness
    Comes stealing o'er my heart.

  My hands I fain had folded
    Upon thy soft brown hair,
  Praying that God may keep thee
    So lovely, pure, and fair.

6[33]

  I would that my love and its sadness
    Might a single word convey,
  The joyous breezes should bear it,
    And merrily waft it away.

  They should waft it to thee, beloved,
    This soft and wailful word,
  At every hour thou shouldst hear it,
    Where'er thou art 'twould be heard.

  And when in the night's first slumber
    Thine eyes scarce closing seem,
  Still should my word pursue thee
    Into thy deepest dream.

7[34]

  The shades of the summer evening lie
    On the forest and meadows green;
  The golden moon shines in the azure sky
    Through balm-breathing air serene.

  The cricket is chirping the brooklet near,
    In the water a something stirs,
  And the wanderer can in the stillness hear
    A plash and a sigh through the furze.

  There all by herself the fairy bright
    Is bathing down in the stream;
  Her arms and throat, bewitching and white,
    In the moonshine glance and gleam.

8[35]

  I know not what evil is coming,
    But my heart feels sad and cold;
  A song in my head keeps humming,
    A tale from the times of old.

  The air is fresh and it darkles,
    And smoothly flows the Rhine;
  The peak of the mountain sparkles
    In the fading sunset-shine.

  The loveliest wonderful maiden
    On high is sitting there,
  With golden jewels braiden,
    And she combs her golden hair.

  With a golden comb sits combing,
  And ever the while sings she
  A marvelous song through the gloaming
  Of magical melody.

  It hath caught the boatman, and bound him
  In the spell of a wild, sad love;
  He sees not the rocks around him,
  He sees only her above.

  The waves through the pass keep swinging,
  But boatman or boat is none;
  And this with her mighty singing
  The Lorelei hath done.

[Illustration: ROCKY COAST _From the Painting by Ludwig von Hofmann._]

       *       *       *       *       *

TWILIGHT[36] (1825-26)

  By the dim sea-shore
  Lonely I sat, and thought-afflicted.
  The sun sank low, and sinking he shed
  Rose and vermilion upon the waters,
  And the white foaming waves,
  Urged on by the tide,
  Foamed and murmured yet nearer and nearer--
  A curious jumble of whispering and wailing,
  A soft rippling laughter and sobbing and sighing,
  And in between all a low lullaby singing.
  Methought I heard ancient forgotten legends,
  The world-old sweet stories,
  Which once, as a boy,
  I heard from my playmates,
  When, of a summer's evening,
  We crouched down to tell stories
  On the stones of the doorstep,
  With small listening hearts,
  And bright curious eyes;
  While the big grown-up girls
  Were sitting opposite
  At flowery and fragrant windows,
  Their rosy faces
  Smiling and moonshine-illumined.

       *       *       *       *       *

HAIL TO THE SEA[37] (1825-26)

  Thalatta! Thalatta!
  Hail to thee, thou eternal sea!
  Hail to thee, ten thousand times, hail!
  With rejoicing heart
  I bid thee welcome,
  As once, long ago, did welcome thee
  Ten thousand Greek hearts--
  Hardship-battling, homesick-yearning,
  World-renowned Greek hearts.

  The billows surged,
  They foamed and murmured,
  The sun poured down, as in haste,
  Flickering ripples of rosy light;
  Long strings of frightened sea-gulls
  Flutter away shrill screaming;
  War-horses trample, and shields clash loudly,
  And far resounds the triumphant cry:
  Thalatta! Thalatta!

  Hail to thee, thou eternal sea!
  Like accents of home thy waters are whispering,
  And dreams of childhood lustrous I see
  Through thy limpid and crystalline wave,
  Calling to mind the dear old memories
  Of dear and delightful toys,
  Of all the glittering Christmas presents,
  Of all the red-branched forests of coral,
  The pearls, the goldfish and bright-colored shells,
  Which thou dost hide mysteriously
  Deep down in thy clear house of crystal.

  Oh, how have I languished in dreary exile!
  Like unto a withered flower
  In the botanist's capsule of tin,
  My heart lay dead in my breast.
  Methought I was prisoned a long sad winter,
  A sick man kept in a darkened chamber;
  And now I suddenly leave it,
  And outside meets me the dazzling Spring,
  Tenderly verdant and sun-awakened;
  And rustling trees shed snowy petals,
  And tender young flowers gaze on me
  With their bright fragrant eyes,
  And the air is full of laughter and gladness,
  And rich with the breath of blossoms,
  And in the blue sky the birds are singing--
  Thalatta! Thalatta!

  Oh, my brave Anabasis-heart!
  How often, ah! how sadly often
  Wast thou pressed hard by the North's fair Barbarians!
  From large and conquering eyes
  They shot forth burning arrows;
  With crooked words as sharp as a rapier
  They threatened to pierce my bosom;
  With cuneiform angular missives they battered
  My poor stunned brains;
  In vain I held out my shield for protection,
  The arrows hissed and the blows rained down,
  And hard pressed I was pushed to the sea
  By the North's fair Barbarians--
  And, breathing freely, I greet the sea,
  The sea my deliverer, the sea my friend--
  Thalatta! Thalatta!

[Illustration: PLAY OF THE WAVES _From the Painting by Arnold Boecklin_]

       *       *       *       *       *

IN THE HARBOR[38] (1825-26)

  Happy is he who hath reached the safe harbor,
  Leaving behind him the stormy wild ocean,
  And now sits cosy and warm
  In the good old Town-Cellar of Bremen.

  How sweet and homelike the world is reflected,
  In the chalice green of Rhinewine Rummer.
  And how the dancing microcosm
  Sunnily glides down the thirsty throat!
  Everything I behold in the glass--
  History, old and new, of the nations,
  Both Turks and Greeks, and Hegel and Gans,
  Forests of citron and big reviews,
  Berlin and Shilda, and Tunis and Hamburg;
  But, above all, thy image, Beloved,
  And thy dear little head on a gold-ground of Rhenish!

  Oh, how fair, how fair art thou, Dearest!
  Thou art as fair as the rose!
  Not like the Rose of Shiras,
  That bride of the nightingale, sung by Hafis,
  Not like the Rose of Sharon,
  That mystic red rose, exalted by prophets--
  Thou art like the "Rose, of the Bremen Town-Cellar,"
  Which is the Rose of Roses;
  The older it grows the sweeter it blossoms,
  And its breath divine it hath all entranced me,
  It hath inspired and kindled my soul;
  And had not the Town-Cellar Master gripped me
  With firm grip and steady,
  I should have stumbled!

  That excellent man! We sat together
  And drank like brothers;
  We spoke of wonderful mystic things,
  We sighed and sank in each other's arms,
  And me to the faith of love he converted;
  I drank to the health of my bitterest foes,
  And I forgave all bad poets sincerely,
  Even as I may one day be forgiven;

  I wept with devotion, and at length
  The doors of salvation were opened unto me,
  Where the sacred Vats, the twelve Apostles,
  Silently preach, yet oh, so plainly,
  Unto all nations.

  These be men forsooth!
  Of humble exterior, in jackets of wood,
  Yet within they are fairer and more enlightened
  Than all the Temple's proud Levites,
  Or the courtiers and followers of Herod,
  Though decked out in gold and in purple;
  Have I not constantly said:
  Not with the herd of common low people,
  But in the best and politest of circles
  The King of Heaven was sure to dwell!

  Hallelujah! How lovely the whisper
  Of Bethel's palm-trees!
  How fragrant the myrtle-trees of Hebron!
  How sings the Jordan and reels with joy!
  My immortal spirit likewise is reeling,
  And I reel in company, and, joyously reeling,
  Leads me upstairs and into the daylight
  That excellent Town-Cellar Master of Bremen.

  Thou excellent Town-Cellar Master of Bremen!
  Dost see on the housetops the little angels
  Sitting aloft, all tipsy and singing?
  The burning sun up yonder
  Is but a fiery and drunken nose--
  The Universe Spirit's red nose;
  And round the Universe Spirit's red nose
  Reels the whole drunken world.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NEW SPRING (1831)

1[39]

  Soft and gently through my soul
  Sweetest bells are ringing,
  Speed you forth, my little song,
  Of springtime blithely singing!

  Speed you onward to a house
  Where sweet flowers are fleeting!
  If, perchance, a rose you see,
  Say, I send her greeting!

  2[40]

  Thy deep blue eyes enchant me,
  So lovingly they glow;
  My gazing soul grows dreamy,
  My words come strange and slow.

  Thy deep blue eyes enchant me
  Wherever I may go:
  An ocean of azure fancies
  O'erwhelms me with its flow.

  3[41]

  Was once an ancient monarch,
  Heavy his heart, his locks were gray,
  This poor and aged monarch
  Took a wife so young and gay.

  Was once a page-boy handsome,
  With lightsome heart and curly hair,
  The silken train he carried
  Of the queen so young and fair.

  Dost know the old, old story?
  It sounds so sweet, so sad to tell--
  Both were obliged to perish,
  They loved each other too well.

       *       *       *       *       *

ABROAD[42] (1834)

  Oh I had once a beauteous Fatherland!
  High used to seem
  The oak--so high!--the violets nodded kind--
  It was a dream.

  In German I was kissed, in German told
  (You scarce would deem
  How sweetly rang the words): "I love thee well!--"
  It was a dream.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SPHINX[43] (1839)

  It is the fairy forest old,
    With lime-tree blossoms scented!
  The moonshine with its mystic light
    My soul and sense enchanted.

  On, on I roamed, and, as I went,
    Sweet music o'er me rose there;
  It is the nightingale--she sings
    Of love and lovers' woes there.

  She sings of love and lovers' woes,
    Hearts blest, and hearts forsaken:
  So sad is her mirth, so glad her sob,
    Dreams long forgot awaken.

  Still on I roamed, and, as I went,
    I saw before me lowering
  On a great wide lawn a stately pile,
    With gables peaked and towering.

  Closed were its windows, everywhere
    A hush, a gloom, past telling;
  It seemed as though silent Death within
    These empty halls were dwelling.

  A Sphinx lay there before the door,
    Half-brutish and half-human,
  A lioness in trunk and claws,
    In head and breasts a woman.

  A lovely woman! The pale cheek
    Spoke of desires that wasted;
  The hushed lips curved into a smile,
    That wooed them to be tasted.

  The nightingale so sweetly sang,
    I yielded to their wooing;
  And as I kissed that winning face,
    I sealed my own undoing.

  The marble image thrilled with life,
    The stone began to quiver;
  She drank my kisses' burning flame
    With fierce convulsive shiver.

  She almost drank my breath away;
    And, to her passion bending,
  She clasped me close, with her lion claws
    My hapless body rending.

  Delicious torture, rapturous pang!
    The pain, the bliss, unbounded!
  Her lips, their kiss was heaven to me,
    Her claws, oh, how they wounded.

  The nightingale sang: "O beauteous Sphinx!
    O love, love! say, why this is,
  That with the anguish of death itself
    Thou minglest all thy blisses?

  "Oh beauteous Sphinx, oh, answer me,
    That riddle strange unloosing!
  For many, many thousand years
    Have I on it been musing!"


GERMANY[44] (1842)

  Germany's still a little child,
    But he's nursed by the sun, though tender;
  He is not suckled on soothing milk,
    But on flames of burning splendor.

  One grows apace on such a diet;
    It fires the blood from languor.
  Ye neighbors' children, have a care
    This urchin how ye anger!

  He is an awkward infant giant;
    The oak by the roots uptearing,
  He'll beat you till your backs are sore,
    And crack your crowns for daring.

  He is like Siegfried, the noble child,
    That song-and-saga wonder;
  Who, when his fabled sword was forged,
    His anvil cleft in sunder!

  To you, who will our Dragon slay,
    Shall Siegfried's strength be given.
  Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse
    Will laugh on you from heaven!

  The Dragon's hoard of royal gems
    You'll win, with none to share it.
  Hurrah! how bright the golden crown
    Will sparkle when you wear it!

       *       *       *       *       *

ENFANT PERDU[45] (1851)

  In Freedom's War, of "Thirty Years" and more,
    A lonely outpost have I held--in vain!
  With no triumphant hope or prize in store,
    Without a thought to see my home again.

  I watched both day and night; I could not sleep
    Like my well-tented comrades far behind,
  Though near enough to let their snoring keep
    A friend awake, if e'er to doze inclined.

  And thus, when solitude my spirits shook,
    Or fear--for all but fools know fear sometimes--
  To rouse myself and them, I piped and took
    A gay revenge in all my wanton rhymes.

  Yes! there I stood, my musket always ready,
    And when some sneaking rascal showed his head,
  My eye was vigilant, my aim was steady,
    And gave his brains an extra dose of lead.

  But war and justice have far different laws,
    And worthless acts are often done right well;
  The rascals' shots were better than their cause,
    And I was hit--and hit again, and fell!

  That outpost is abandoned; while the one
    Lies in the dust, the rest in troops depart;
  Unconquered--I have done what could be done,
    With sword unbroken, and with broken heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE BATTLEFIELD OF HASTINGS[46] (1855)

  Deeply the Abbot of Waltham sighed
    When he heard the news of woe:
  How King Harold had come to a pitiful end,
    And on Hastings field lay low.

  Asgod and Ailrik, two of his monks,
    On the mission drear he sped
  To search for the corse on the battle-plain
    Among the bloody dead.

  The monks arose and went sadly forth,
    And returned as heavy-hearted.
  "O Father, the world's a bitter world,
    And evil days have started.

  "For fallen, alack! is the better man;
    The Bastard has won, and knaves
  And scutcheoned thieves divide the land,
    And make the freemen slaves.

  "The veriest rascals from Normandy,
    In Britain are lords and sirs.
  I saw a tailor from Bayeux ride
    With a pair of golden spurs.

  "O woe to all who are Saxon born!
    Ye Saxon saints, beware!
  For high in heaven though ye dwell,
    Shame yet may be your share.

  "Ah, now we know what the comet meant
    That rode, blood-red and dire,
  Across the midnight firmament
    This year on a broom of fire.

  "'Twas an evil star, and Hastings' field
    Has fulfilled the omen dread.
  We went upon the battle-plain,
    And sought among the dead.

  "While still there lingered any hope
    We sought, but sought in vain;
  King Harold's corse we could not find
    Among the bloody slain."

  Asgod and Ailrik spake and ceased.
    The Abbot wrung his hands.
  Awhile he pondered, then he sighed,
    "Now mark ye my commands.

  "By the stone of the bard at Grendelfield,
    Just midway through the wood,
  One, Edith of the Swan's Neck, dwells
    In a hovel poor and rude.

  "They named her thus, because her neck
    Was once as slim and white
  As any swan's--when, long ago,
    She was the king's delight.

  "He loved and kissed, forsook, forgot,
    For such is the way of men.
  Time runs his course with a rapid foot;
    It is sixteen years since then.

  "To this woman, brethren, ye shall go,
    And she will follow you fain
  To the battle-field; the woman's eye
    Will not seek the king in vain.

  "Thereafter to Waltham Abbey here
    His body ye shall bring,
  That Christian burial he may have,
    While for his soul we sing."

  The messengers reached the hut in the wood
    At the hour of midnight drear.
  "Wake, Edith of the Swan's Neck, rise
    And follow without fear.

  "The Duke of Normandy has won
    The battle, to our bane.
  On the field of Hastings, where he fought,
    The king is lying slain.

  "Arise and come with us; we seek
    His body among the dead.
  To Waltham Abbey it shall be borne.
    'Twas thus our Abbot said."

  The woman arose and girded her gown,
    And silently went behind
  The hurrying monks. Her grizzly hair
    Streamed wildly on the wind.

  Barefoot through bog and bush and briar
    She followed and did not stay,
  Till Hastings and the cliffs of chalk
    They saw at dawn of day.

  The mist, that like a sheet of white
    The field of battle cloaked,
  Melted anon; with hideous din
    The daws flew up and croaked.

  In thousands on the bloody plain
    Lay strewn the piteous corses,
  Wounded and torn and maimed and stripped,
    Among the fallen horses.

  The woman stopped not for the blood;
    She waded barefoot through,
  And from her fixed and staring eyes
    The arrowy glances flew.

  Long, with the panting monks behind,
    And pausing but to scare
  The greedy ravens from their food,
    She searched with eager care.

  She searched and toiled the livelong day,
    Until the night was nigh;
  Then sudden from her breast there burst
    A shrill and awful cry.

  For on the battle-field at last
    His body she had found.
  She kissed, without a tear or word,
    The wan face on the ground.

  She kissed his brow, she kissed his mouth,
    She clasped him close, and pressed
  Her poor lips to the bloody wounds
    That gaped upon his breast.

  His shoulder stark she kisses too,
    When, searching, she discovers
  Three little scars her teeth had made
    When they were happy lovers.

  The monks had been and gotten boughs,
    And of these boughs they made
  A simple bier, whereon the corse
    Of the fallen king was laid.

  To Waltham Abbey to his tomb
    The king was thus removed;
  And Edith of the Swan's Neck walked
    By the body that she loved.

  She chanted litanies for his soul
    With a childish, weird lament
  That shuddered through the night. The monks
    Prayed softly as they went.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE ASRA[47] (1855)

  Every evening in the twilight,
  To and fro beside the fountain
  Where the waters whitely murmured,
  Walked the Sultan's lovely daughter.

  And a youth, a slave, was standing
  Every evening by the fountain
  Where the waters whitely murmured;
  And his cheek grew pale and paler.

  Till one eve the lovely princess
  Paused and asked him on a sudden:
  "I would know thy name and country;
  I would know thy home and kindred."

  And the slave replied, "Mohammed
  Is my name; my home is Yemen;
  And my people are the Asras;
  When they love, they love and die."

       *       *       *       *       *

THE PASSION FLOWER[48] (1856)

  I dreamt that once upon a summer night
    Beneath the pallid moonlight's eerie glimmer
  I saw where, wrought in marble dimly bright,
    A ruin of the Renaissance did shimmer.

  Yet here and there, in simple Doric form,
    A pillar like some solitary giant
  Rose from the mass, and, fearless of the storm,
    Reared toward the firmament its head defiant.

  O'er all that place a heap of wreckage lay,
    Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals,
  With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay--
    Figures of fabled monsters and of mortals.

  A marble-wrought sarcophagus reposed
    Unharmed 'mid fragments of these fabled creatures;
  Its lidless depth a dead man's form inclosed,
    The pain-wrung face now calm with softened features.

  A group of straining caryatides
    With steadfast neck the casket's weight supported,
  Along both sides whereof there ran a frieze
    Of chiseled figures, wondrous ill-assorted.

  First one might see where, decked in bright array,
    A train of lewd Olympians proudly glided,
  Then Adam and Dame Eve, not far away,
    With fig-leaf aprons modestly provided.

  Next came the people of the Trojan war--
    Paris, Achilles, Helen, aged Nestor;
  Moses and Aaron, too, with many more--
    As Judith, Holofernes, Haman, Esther.

  Such forms as Cupid's one could likewise see,
    Phoebus Apollo, Vulcan, Lady Venus,
  Pluto and Proserpine and Mercury,
    God Bacchus and Priapus and Silenus.

  Among the rest of these stood Balaam's ass--
    A speaking likeness (if you will, a braying)--
  And Abraham's sacrifice, and there, alas!
    Lot's daughters, too, their drunken sire betraying.

  Near by them danced the wanton Salome,
    To whom John's head was carried in a charger;
  Then followed Satan, writhing horribly,
    And Peter with his keys--none e'er seemed larger

  Changing once more, the sculptor's cunning skill
    Showed lustful Jove misusing his high power,
  When as a swan he won fair Leda's will,
    And conquered Danae in a golden shower.

  Here was Diana, leading to the chase
    Her kilted nymphs, her hounds with eyeballs burning;
  And here was Hercules in woman's dress,
    His warlike hand the peaceful distaff turning.

  Not far from them frowned Sinai, bleak and wild,
    Along whose slope lay Israel's nomad nation;
  Next, one might see our Savior as a child
    Amid the elders holding disputation.

  Thus were these opposites absurdly blent--
    The Grecian joy of living with the godly
  Judean cast of thought!--while round them bent
    The ivy's tendrils, intertwining oddly.

  But--wonderful to say!--while dreamily
    I gazed thereon with glance returning often,
  Sudden methought that I myself was he,
    The dead man in the splendid marble coffin.

  Above the coffin by my head there grew
    A flower for a symbol sweet and tragic,
  Violet and sulphur-yellow was its hue,
    It seemed to throb with love's mysterious magic.

  Tradition says, when Christ was crucified
    On Calvary, that in that very hour
  These petals with the Savior's blood were dyed,
    And therefore is it named the passion-flower.

  The hue of blood, they say, its blossom wears,
    And all the instruments of human malice
  Used at the crucifixion still it bears
    In miniature within its tiny chalice.

  Whatever to the Passion's rite belongs,
    Each tool of torture here is represented
  The crown of thorns, cup, nails and hammer, thongs,
    The cross on which our Master was tormented.

  'Twas such a flower at my tomb did stand,
    Above my lifeless form in sorrow bending,
  And, like a mourning woman, kissed my hand,
     My brow and eyes, with silent grief contending.

  And then--O witchery of dreams most strange!--
    By some occult and sudden transformation
  This flower to a woman's shape did change--
    'Twas she I loved with soul-deep adoration!

  'Twas thou in truth, my dearest, only thou;
    I knew thee by thy kisses warm and tender.
  No flower-lips thus softly touched my brow,
    Such burning tears no flower's cup might render!
  Mine eyes were shut, and yet my soul could see
    Thy steadfast countenance divinely beaming,
  As, calm with rapture, thou didst gaze on me,
    Thy features in the spectral moonlight gleaming.

  We did not speak, and yet my heart could tell
    The hidden thoughts that thrilled within thy bosom.
  No chaste reserve in spoken words may dwell--
    With silence Love puts forth its purest blossom.

  A voiceless dialogue! one scarce might deem,
    While mute we thus communed in tender fashion,
  How time slipped by like some seraphic dream
    Of night, all woven of joy and fear-sweet passion.

  Ah, never ask of us what then we said;
    Ask what the glow-worm glimmers to the grasses,
  Or what the wavelet murmurs in its bed,
    Or what the west wind whispers as it passes.

  Ask what rich lights from carbuncles outstream,
    What perfumed thoughts o'er rose and violet hover--
  But never ask what, in the moonlight's beam,
    The sacred flower breathed to her dead lover.

  I cannot tell how long a time I lay,
    Dreaming the ecstasy of joys Elysian,
  Within my marble shrine. It fled away--
    The rapture of that calm untroubled vision.

  Death, with thy grave-deep stillness, thou art best,
    Delight's full cup thy hand alone can proffer;
  The war of passions, pleasure without rest--
    Such boons are all that vulgar life can offer.

  Alas! a sudden clamor put to flight
    My bliss, and all my comfort rudely banished;
  'Twas such a screaming, ramping, raging fight
    That mid the uproar straight my flower vanished.

  Then on all sides began a savage war
    Of argument, with scolding and with jangling.
  Some voices surely I had heard before--
    Why, 'twas my bas-reliefs had fall'n a-wrangling!

  Do old delusions haunt these marbles here,
    And urge them on to frantic disputations?
  The terror-striking shout of Pan rings clear,
    While Moses hurls his stern denunciations.

  Alack! the wordy strife will have no end,
    Beauty and Truth will ever be at variance,
  A schism still the ranks of man will rend
    Into two camps, the Hellenes and Barbarians.

  Both parties thus reviled and cursed away,
    And none who heard could tell the why or whether,
  Till Balaam's ass at last began to bray
    And soon outbawled both gods and saints together.

  With strident-sobbing hee-haw, hee-haw there--
    His unremitting discords without number--
  That beast so nearly brought me to despair
    That I cried out--and wakened from my slumber.

       *       *       *       *       *




THE JOURNEY TO THE HARZ[49] (1824)

BY HEINRICH HEINE

TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

"Nothing is permanent but change, nothing constant but death. Every
pulsation of the heart inflicts a wound, and life would be an endless
bleeding were it not for Poetry. She secures to us what Nature would
deny--a golden age without rust, a spring which never fades, cloudless
prosperity and eternal youth."--BOeRNE.

  Black dress coats and silken stockings,
    Snowy ruffles frilled with art,
  Gentle speeches and embraces--
    Oh, if they but held a heart!

  Held a heart within their bosom,
    Warmed by love which truly glows;
  Ah! I'm wearied with their chanting
    Of imagined lovers' woes!

  I will climb upon the mountains,
    Where the quiet cabin stands,
  Where the wind blows freely o'er us,
    Where the heart at ease expands.

  I will climb upon the mountains,
    Where the sombre fir-trees grow;
  Brooks are rustling, birds are singing,
    And the wild clouds headlong go.

  Then farewell, ye polished ladies,
    Polished men and polished hall!
  I will climb upon the mountains,
    Smiling down upon you all.

The town of Goettingen, celebrated for its sausages and its University,
belongs to the King of Hanover, and contains nine hundred and
ninety-nine dwellings, divers churches, a lying-in hospital, an
observatory, a prison for students, a library, and a "Ratskeller," where
the beer is excellent. The stream which flows by the town is called the
Leine, and is used in summer for bathing, its waters being very cold,
and in more than one place it is so broad that Lueder was obliged to take
quite a run ere he could leap across. The town itself is beautiful, and
pleases most when one's back is turned to it. It must be very ancient,
for I well remember that five years ago, when I matriculated there (and
shortly after received notice to quit), it had already the same gray,
prim look, and was fully furnished with catch-polls, beadles,
dissertations, _thes dansants_, washerwomen, compendiums, roasted
pigeons, Guelphic orders, graduation coaches, pipe-heads,
court-councilors, law-councilors, expelling councilors, professors
ordinary and extraordinary. Many even assert that, at the time of the
Great Migrations, every German tribe left behind in the town a loosely
bound copy of itself in the person of one of its members, and that from
these descended all the Vandals, Frisians, Suabians, Teutons, Saxons,
Thuringians,[50] and others, who at the present day still abound in
Goettingen, where, separately distinguished by the color of their caps
and pipe-tassels, they may be seen straying singly or in hordes along
the Weender Street. They still fight their battles on the bloody arena
of the _Rasenmill, Ritschenkrug_, and _Bovden_, still preserve the mode
of life peculiar to their savage ancestors, and still, as at the time of
the migrations, are governed partly by their _Duces_, whom they call
"chief cocks," and partly by their primevally ancient law-book, known as
the _Comment_, which fully deserves a place among the _leges
barbarorum_.

The inhabitants of Goettingen are generally divided into Students,
Professors, Philistines, and Cattle, the points of difference between
these castes being by no means strictly defined. The "Cattle" class is
the most important. I might be accused of prolixity should I here
enumerate the names of all the students and of all the regular and
irregular professors; besides, I do not just at present distinctly
remember the appellations of all the former gentlemen; while among the
professors are many who as yet have no name at all. The number of the
Goettingen "Philistines" must be as numerous as the sands (or, more
correctly speaking, as the mud) of the seashore; indeed, when I beheld
them of a morning, with their dirty faces and clean bills, planted
before the gate of the collegiate court of justice, I wondered greatly
that such an innumerable pack of rascals should ever have been created
by the Almighty.

[Illustration: MARKET PLACE GOeTTINGEN]

       *       *       *       *       *

It was as yet very early in the morning when I left Goettingen, and the
learned ----, beyond doubt, still lay in bed, dreaming as usual that he
wandered in a fair garden, amid the beds of which grew innumerable white
papers written over with citations. On these the sun shone cheerily, and
he plucked up several here and there and laboriously planted them in new
beds, while the sweetest songs of the nightingales rejoiced his old
heart.

Before the Weender Gate I met two small native schoolboys, one of whom
was saying to the other, "I don't intend to keep company any more with
Theodore; he is a low blackguard, for yesterday he didn't even know the
genitive of _Mensa_." Insignificant as these words may appear, I still
regard them as entitled to be recorded--nay, I would even write them as
town-motto on the gate of Goettingen, for the young birds pipe as the old
ones sing, and the expression accurately indicates the narrow, petty
academic pride so characteristic of the "highly learned" Georgia
Augusta.[51]  The fresh morning air blew over the highroad, the birds
sang cheerily, and, little by little, with the breeze and the birds, my
mind also became fresh and cheerful. Such refreshment was sorely needed
by one who had long been confined in the Pandect stable. Roman casuists
had covered my soul with gray cobwebs; my heart was as though jammed
between the iron paragraphs of selfish systems of jurisprudence; there
was an endless ringing in my ears of such sounds as "Tribonian,
Justinian, Hermogenian, and Blockheadian," and a sentimental brace of
lovers seated under a tree appeared to me like an edition of the _Corpus
Juris_ with closed clasps. The road began to take on a more lively
appearance. Milkmaids occasionally passed, as did also donkey-drivers
with their gray pupils. Beyond Weende I met the "Shepherd" and "Doris."
This is not the idyllic pair sung by Gessner, but the duly and
comfortably appointed university beadles, whose duty it is to keep watch
and ward so that no students fight duels in Bovden, and, above all, that
no new ideas (such as are generally obliged to remain in quarantine for
several decades outside of Goettingen) are smuggled in by speculative
private lecturers. Shepherd greeted me as one does a colleague, for he,
too, is an author, who has frequently mentioned my name in his
semi-annual writings. In addition to this, I may mention that when, as
was frequently the case, he came to cite me before the university court
and found me "not at home," he was always kind enough to write the
citation with chalk upon my chamber door. Occasionally a one-horse
vehicle rolled along, well packed with students, who were leaving for
the vacation or forever.

In such a university town there is an endless coming and going. Every
three years beholds a new student-generation, forming an incessant human
tide, where one semester-wave succeeds another, and only the old
professors stand fast in the midst of this perpetual-motion flood,
immovable as the pyramids of Egypt. Only in these university pyramids no
treasures of wisdom are buried.

From out the myrtle bushes, by Rauschenwasser, I saw two hopeful youths
appear ... singing charmingly the Rossinian lay of "Drink beer, pretty,
pretty 'Liza!" These sounds I continued to hear when far in the
distance, and after I had long lost sight of the amiable vocalists, as
their horses, which appeared to be gifted with characters of extreme
German deliberation, were spurred and lashed in a most excruciating
style. In no place is the skinning alive of horses carried to such an
extent as in Goettingen; and often, when I beheld some lame and sweating
hack, which, to earn the scraps of fodder which maintained his wretched
life, was obliged to endure the torment of some roaring blade, or draw a
whole wagon-load of students, I reflected: "Unfortunate beast! Most
certainly thy first ancestors, in some horse-paradise, did eat of
forbidden oats."

       *       *       *       *       *

Beyond Noerten the sun flashed high in heaven. His intentions toward me
were evidently good, and he warmed my brain until all the unripe
thoughts which it contained came to full growth. The pleasant Sun Tavern
in Noerten is not to be despised, either; I stopped there and found
dinner ready. All the dishes were excellent and suited me far better
than the wearisome, academical courses of saltless, leathery dried fish
and cabbage _rechauffe_, which were served to me in Goettingen. After I
had somewhat appeased my appetite, I remarked in the same room of the
tavern a gentle man and two ladies, who were about to depart. The
cavalier was clad entirely in green; he even had on a pair of green
spectacles which cast a verdigris tinge upon his copper-red nose. The
gentleman's general appearance was like what we may presume King
Nebuchadnezzar's to have been in his later years, when, according to
tradition, he ate nothing but salad, like a beast of the forest. The
Green One requested me to recommend him to a hotel in Goettingen, and I
advised him, when there, to inquire of the first convenient student for
the Hotel de Bruebach. One lady was evidently his wife--an altogether
extensively constructed dame, gifted with a rubicund square mile of
countenance, with dimples in her cheeks which looked like spittoons for
cupids. A copious double chin appeared below, like an imperfect
continuation of the face, while her high-piled bosom, which was defended
by stiff points of lace and a many-cornered collar, as if by turrets and
bastions, reminded one of a fortress. Still, it is by no means certain
that this fortress would have resisted an ass laden with gold, any more
than did that of which Philip of Macedon spoke. The other lady, her
sister, seemed her extreme antitype. If the one were descended from
Pharaoh's fat kine, the other was as certainly derived from the lean.
Her face was but a mouth between two ears; her breast was as
inconsolably comfortless and dreary as the Lueneburger heath; while her
absolutely dried-up figure reminded one of a charity table for poor
theological students. Both ladies asked me, in a breath, if respectable
people lodged in the Hotel de Bruebach. I assented to this question with
a clear conscience, and as the charming trio drove away I waved my hand
to them many times from the window. The landlord of The Sun laughed,
however, in his sleeve, being probably aware that the Hotel de Bruebach
was a name bestowed by the students of Goettingen upon their university
prison.

Beyond Nordheim mountain ridges begin to appear, and the traveler
occasionally meets with a picturesque eminence. The wayfarers whom I
encountered were principally peddlers, traveling to the Brunswick fair,
and among them there was a group of women, every one of whom bore on her
back an incredibly large cage nearly as high as a house, covered over
with white linen. In this cage were every variety of singing birds,
which continually chirped and sung, while their bearers merrily hopped
along and chattered together. It seemed droll thus to behold one bird
carrying others to market.

The night was as dark as pitch when I entered Osterode. I had no
appetite for supper, and at once went to bed. I was as tired as a dog
and slept like a god. In my dreams I returned to Goettingen and found
myself in the library. I stood in a corner of the Hall of Jurisprudence,
turning over old dissertations, lost myself in reading, and, when I
finally looked up, remarked to my astonishment that it was night and
that the hall was illuminated by innumerable over-hanging crystal
chandeliers. The bell of the neighboring church struck twelve, the hall
doors slowly opened, and there entered a superb colossal female form,
reverentially accompanied by the members and hangers-on of the legal
faculty. The giantess, though advanced in years, retained in her
countenance traces of severe beauty, and her every glance indicated the
sublime Titaness, the mighty Themis. The sword and balance were
carelessly grasped in her right hand, while with the left she held a
roll of parchment. Two young _Doctores Juris_ bore the train of her
faded gray robe; by her right side the lean Court Councilor Rusticus,
the Lycurgus of Hanover, fluttered here and there like a zephyr,
declaiming extracts from his last hand-book of law, while on her left
her _cavalier servente_, the privy-councilor of Justice Cujacius,
hobbled gaily and gallantly along, constantly cracking legal jokes,
himself laughing so heartily at his own wit that even the serious
goddess often smiled and bent over him, exclaiming, as she tapped him on
the shoulder with the great parchment roll, "You little scamp, who begin
to trim the trees from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her
escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest
over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little
hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains.
Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered,
who announced themselves as the remaining magnates of the illustrious
Order--mostly angular suspicious-looking fellows, who with extreme
complacency blazed away with their definitions and hair-splittings,
disputing over every scrap of a title to the title of a pandect. And
other forms continually flocked in, the forms of those who were learned
in law in the olden time--men in antiquated costume, with long
councilors' wigs and forgotten faces, who expressed themselves greatly
astonished that they, the widely famed of the previous century, should
not meet with special consideration; and these, after their manner,
joined in the general chattering and screaming, which, like ocean
breakers, became louder and madder around the mighty goddess, until she,
bursting with impatience, suddenly cried, in a tone of the most agonized
Titanic pain, "Silence! Silence! I hear the voice of the beloved
Prometheus. Mocking cunning and brute force are chaining the Innocent
One to the rock of martyrdom, and all your prattling and quarreling will
not allay his wounds or break his fetters!" So cried the goddess, and
rivulets of tears sprang from her eyes; the entire assembly howled as if
in the agonies of death, the ceiling of the hall burst asunder, the
books tumbled madly from their shelves. In vain did Muenchhausen step out
of his frame to call them to order; it only crashed and raged all the
more wildly. I sought refuge from this Bedlam broken loose in the Hall
of History, near that gracious spot where the holy images of the Apollo
Belvedere and the Venus de Medici stand near each other, and I knelt at
the feet of the Goddess of Beauty. In her glance I forgot all the wild
excitement from which I had escaped, my eyes drank in with intoxication
the symmetry and immortal loveliness of her infinitely blessed form;
Hellenic calm swept through my soul, while above my head Phoebus Apollo
poured forth, like heavenly blessings, the sweetest tones of his lyre.

Awaking, I continued to hear a pleasant, musical sound. The flocks were
on their way to pasture, and their bells were tinkling. The blessed
golden sunlight shone through the window, illuminating the pictures on
the walls of my room. They were sketches from the War of Independence,
which faithfully portrayed what heroes we all were; further, there were
scenes representing executions on the guillotine, from the time of the
revolution under Louis XIV., and other similar decapitations which no
one could behold without thanking God that he lay quietly in bed
drinking excellent coffee, and with his head comfortably adjusted upon
neck and shoulders.

After I had drunk my coffee, dressed myself, read the inscriptions upon
the window-panes, and settled my bill at the inn, I left Osterode.

This town contains a certain quantity of houses and a given number of
inhabitants, among whom are divers and sundry souls, as may be
ascertained in detail from Gottschalk's "Pocket Guide-Book for Harz
Travelers." Ere I struck into the highway, I ascended the ruins of the
very ancient Osteroder Burg. They consisted merely of the half of a
great, thick-walled tower, which appeared to be fairly honeycombed by
time. The road to Clausthal led me again uphill, and from one of the
first eminences I looked back once more into the dale where Osterode
with its red roofs peeps out from among the green fir-woods, like a
moss-rose from amid its leaves. The sun cast a pleasant, tender light
over the whole scene. From this spot the imposing rear of the remaining
portion of the tower may be seen to advantage.

There are many other ruined castles in this vicinity. That of
Hardenberg, near Noerten, is the most beautiful. Even when one has, as he
should, his heart on the left--that is, the liberal side--he cannot
banish all melancholy feeling on beholding the rocky nests of those
privileged birds of prey, who left to their effete descendants only
their fierce appetites. So it happened to me this morning. My heart
thawed gradually as I departed from Goettingen; I again became romantic,
and as I went on I made up this poem:

  Rise again, ye dreams forgotten;
    Heart-gate, open to the sun!
  Joys of song and tears of sorrow
    Sweetly strange from thee shall run.

  I will rove the fir-tree forest,
    Where the merry fountain springs,
  Where the free, proud stags are wandering,
    Where the thrush, my darling, sings.

  I will climb upon the mountains,
    On the steep and rocky height,
  Where the gray old castle ruins
    Stand in rosy morning light.

  I will sit awhile reflecting
    On the times long passed away,
  Races which of old were famous,
    Glories sunk in deep decay.

  Grows the grass upon the tilt-yard,
    Where the all-victorious knight
  Overcame the strongest champions,
    Won the guerdon of the fight.

  O'er the balcony twines ivy,
    Where the fairest gave the prize,
  Him who all the rest had vanquished
    Overcoming with her eyes.

  Both the victors, knight and lady,
    Fell long since by Death's cold hand;
  So the gray and withered scytheman
    Lays the mightiest in the sand.

After proceeding a little distance, I met with a traveling journeyman
who came from Brunswick, and who related to me that it was generally
believed in that city that their young Duke had been taken prisoner by
the Turks during his tour in the Holy Land, and could be ransomed only
by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably
originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that
traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in
their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat
little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as
through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that
eccentric mixture of humor and melancholy peculiar to the German people.
This was especially expressed in the droll and affecting manner in which
he sang that extraordinary popular ballad, "A beetle sat upon the hedge,
_summ, summ!_" There is one fine thing about us Germans--no one is so
crazy but that he may find a crazier comrade who will understand him.
Only a German _can_ appreciate that song, and in the same breath laugh
and cry himself to death over it. On this occasion I also remarked the
depth to which the words of Goethe have penetrated the national life. My
lean comrade trilled occasionally as he went along--"Joyful and
sorrowful, thoughts are free!" Such a corruption of text is usual among
the multitude. He also sang a song in which "Lottie by the grave of
Werther" wept. The tailor ran over with sentimentalism in the words--

  "Sadly by the rose-beds now I weep,
  Where the late moon found us oft alone!
  Moaning where the silver fountains sleep,
  Once which whispered joy in every tone."

       *       *       *       *       *

The hills here became steeper, the fir-woods below were like a green
sea, and white clouds above sailed along over the blue sky. The wildness
of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the
simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt
transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times
appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously
corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so that all the
colors of a landscape blend into one another like soft music, and every
glance at such a natural picture tranquilizes and reassures the soul.
The late Hofmann would have painted the clouds spotted and chequered.
And, like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest
effects with the most limited means. She has, after all, only a sun,
trees, flowers, water, and love to work with. Of course, if the latter
be lacking in the heart of the observer, the whole will, in all
probability, present but a poor appearance; the sun is then only so many
miles in diameter, the trees are good for firewood, the flowers are
classified according to their stamens, and the water is wet.

A little boy who was gathering brushwood in the forest for his sick
uncle pointed out to me the village of Lerrbach, whose little huts with
gray roofs lie scattered along for over a mile through the valley.
"There," said he, "live idiots with goitres, and white negroes." By
white negroes the people mean "albinos." The little fellow lived on
terms of peculiar understanding with the trees, addressing them like old
acquaintances, while they in turn seemed by their waving and rustling to
return his salutations. He chirped like a thistle-finch; many birds
around answered his call, and, ere I was aware, he had disappeared amid
the thickets with his little bare feet and his bundle of brush.
"Children," thought I, "are younger than we; they can remember when they
were once trees or birds, and are consequently still able to understand
them. We of larger growth are, alas, too old for that, and carry about
in our heads too many sorrows and bad verses and too much legal lore."
But the time when it was otherwise recurred vividly to me as I entered
Clausthal. In this pretty little mountain town, which the traveler does
not behold until he stands directly before it, I arrived just as the
clock was striking twelve and the children came tumbling merrily out of
school. The little rogues, nearly all red-cheeked, blue-eyed,
flaxen-haired, sprang and shouted and awoke in me melancholy and
cheerful memories--how I once myself, as a little boy, sat all the
forenoon long in a gloomy Catholic cloister school in Duesseldorf,
without so much as daring to stand up, enduring meanwhile a terrible
amount of Latin, whipping, and geography, and how I too hurrahed and
rejoiced, beyond all measure when the old Franciscan clock at last
struck twelve. The children saw by my knapsack that I was a stranger,
and greeted me in the most hospitable manner. One of the boys told me
that they had just had a lesson in religion, and showed me the Royal
Hanoverian Catechism, from which they were questioned on Christianity.
This little book was very badly printed, so that I greatly feared that
the doctrines of faith made thereby but an unpleasant blotting-paper
sort of impression upon the children's minds. I was also shocked at
observing that the multiplication table--which surely seriously
contradicts the Holy Trinity--was printed on the last page of the
catechism, as it at once occurred to me that by this means the minds of
the children might, even in their earliest years, be led to the most
sinful skepticism. We Prussians are more intelligent, and, in our zeal
for converting those heathen who are familiar with arithmetic, take good
care not to print the multiplication table in the back of the catechism.

I dined at The Crown, at Clausthal. My repast consisted of spring-green
parsley-soup, violet-blue cabbage, a pile of roast veal, which resembled
Chimborazo in miniature, and a sort of smoked herring, called
"Bueckings," from the inventor, William Buecking, who died in 1447, and
who, on account of the invention, was so greatly honored by Charles V.
that the great monarch in 1556 made a journey from Middleburg to
Bievlied in Zealand for the express purpose of visiting the grave of the
great man. How exquisitely such dishes taste when we are familiar with
their historical associations!

       *       *       *       *       *

In the silver refinery, as has so frequently happened in life, I could
get no glimpse of the precious metal. In the mint I succeeded better,
and saw how money was made. Beyond this I have never been able to
advance. On such occasions mine has invariably been the spectator's
part, and I verily believe that, if it should rain dollars from heaven,
the coins would only knock holes in my head, while the children of
Israel would merrily gather up the silver manna. With feelings in which
comic reverence was blended with emotion, I beheld the new-born shining
dollars, took one in my hand as it came fresh from the stamp, and said
to it, "Young Dollar, what a destiny awaits thee! What a cause wilt thou
be of good and of evil! How thou wilt protect vice and patch up virtue!
How thou wilt be beloved and accursed! How thou wilt aid in debauchery,
pandering, lying, and murdering! How thou wilt restlessly roll along
through clean and dirty hands for centuries, until finally, laden with
tresspasses and weary with sin, thou wilt be gathered again unto thine
own, in the bosom of an Abraham, who will melt thee down, purify thee,
and form thee into a new and better being, perhaps an innocent little
tea-spoon, with which my own great-great-grandson will mash his
porridge."

I will narrate in detail my visit to "Dorothea" and "Caroline," the two
principal Clausthaler mines, having found them very interesting.

Half an hour away from the town are situated two large dingy buildings.
Here the traveler is transferred to the care of the miners. These men
wear dark and generally steel-blue colored jackets, of ample girth,
descending to the hips, with pantaloons of a similar hue, a leather
apron tied on behind, and a rimless green felt hat which resembles a
decapitated nine-pin. In such a garb, with the exception of the
"back-leather," the visitor is also clad, and a miner, his "leader,"
after lighting his mine-lamp, conducts him to a gloomy entrance
resembling a chimney-hole, descends as far as the breast, gives him a
few directions relative to grasping the ladder, and requests him to
follow fearlessly. The affair is entirely devoid of danger, though it at
first appears quite otherwise to those unacquainted with the mysteries
of mining. Even the putting on of the dark convict-dress awakens very
peculiar sensations. Then one must clamber down on all fours, the dark
hole is so _very_ dark, and Lord only knows how long the ladder may be!
But we soon remark that this is not the only ladder descending into the
black eternity, for there are many, of from fifteen to twenty rounds
apiece, each standing upon a board capable of supporting a man, and from
which a new hole leads in turn to a new ladder. I first entered the
"Caroline," the dirtiest and most disagreeable Caroline with whom I ever
had the pleasure of becoming acquainted. The rounds of the ladders were
covered with wet mud. And from one ladder we descend to another with the
guide ever in advance, continually assuring us that there was no danger
so long as we held firmly to the rounds and did not look at our feet,
and that we must not for our lives tread on the side plank, where the
buzzing barrel-rope runs, and where two weeks ago a careless man was
knocked down, unfortunately breaking his neck by the fall. Far below is
a confused rustling and humming, and we continually bump against beams
and ropes which are in motion, winding up and raising barrels of broken
ore or of water. Occasionally we pass galleries hewn in the rock, called
"stulms," where the ore may be seen growing, and where some solitary
miner sits the livelong day, wearily hammering pieces from the walls. I
did not descend to those deepest depths where it is reported that the
people on the other side of the world, in America, may be heard crying,
"Hurrah for Lafayette!" Between ourselves, where I did go seemed to me
deep enough in all conscience; there was an endless roaring and
rattling, uncanny sounds of machinery, the rush of subterranean streams,
sickening clouds of ore-dust continually rising, water dripping on all
sides, and the miner's lamp gradually growing dimmer and dimmer. The
effect was really benumbing, I breathed with difficulty, and had trouble
in holding to the slippery rounds. It was not _fright_ which overpowered
me, but, oddly enough, down there in the depths, I remembered that a
year before, about the same time, I had been in a storm on the North
Sea, and I now felt that it would be an agreeable change could I feel
the rocking of the ship, hear the wind with its thunder-trumpet tones,
while amid its lulls sounded the hearty cry of the sailors, and all
above was freshly swept by God's own free air--yes, sir! Panting for
air, I rapidly climbed several dozens of ladders, and my guide led me
through a narrow and very long gallery toward the "Dorothea" mine. Here
it was airier and fresher, and the ladders were cleaner, though at the
same time longer and steeper, than in the "Caroline." I felt revived and
more cheerful, particularly as I again observed traces of human beings.
Far below I saw wandering, wavering lights; miners with their lamps came
upwards one by one with the greeting, "Good luck to you!" and, receiving
the same salutation from us, went onwards and upwards. Something like a
friendly and quiet, yet, at the same time, painful and enigmatical
recollection flitted across my mind as I met the deep glances and
earnest pale faces of these young and old men, mysteriously illuminated
by their lanterns, and thought how they had worked all day in lonely and
secret places in the mines, and how they now longed for the blessed
light of day and for the glances of wives and children.

My guide himself was an absolutely honest, thoroughly loyal German
specimen. With inward joy he pointed out to me the "place" where the
Duke of Cambridge, when he visited the mines, dined with all his train,
and where the long wooden table yet stands; with the accompanying great
chair, made of ore, in which the Duke sat. "This is to remain as an
eternal memorial," said the good miner, and he related with enthusiasm
how many festivities had then taken place, how the entire "stulm" had
been adorned with lamps, flowers, and decorations of leaves; how a miner
boy had played on the cithern and sung; how the dear, delighted, fat
Duke had drained many healths, and what a number of miners (himself
especially) would cheerfully die for the dear, fat Duke, and for the
whole house of Hanover. I am moved to my very heart when I see loyalty
thus manifested in all its natural simplicity. It is such a beautiful
sentiment, and such a purely _German_ sentiment! Other people may be
wittier, more intelligent, and more agreeable, but none is so faithful
as the real German race. Did I not know that fidelity is as old as the
world, I would believe that a German heart had invented it. German
fidelity is no modern "Yours very truly," or "I remain your humble
servant." In your courts, ye German princes, ye should cause to be sung,
and sung again, the old ballad of _The Trusty Eckhart and the Base
Burgund_ who slew Eckhart's seven children, and still found him
faithful. Ye have the truest people in the world, and ye err when ye
deem that the old, intelligent, trusty hound has suddenly gone mad, and
snaps at your sacred calves!

And, like German fidelity, the little mine-lamp has guided us
quietly and securely, without much flickering or flaring, through
the labyrinth of shafts and stulms. We ascend out of the gloomy
mountain-night--sunlight flashes around--"Good luck to you!"

Most of the miners dwell in Clausthal, and in the adjoining small town
of Zellerfeld. I visited several of these brave fellows, observed their
little households, heard many of their songs, which they skilfully
accompany with their favorite instrument, the cithern, and listened to
old mining legends, and to their prayers which they are accustomed to
offer daily in company ere they descend the gloomy shaft; and many a
good prayer did I offer up with them! One old climber even thought that
I ought to remain among them, and become a man of the mines; but as I
took my leave notwithstanding, he gave me a message to his brother, who
dwelt near Goslar, and many kisses for his darling niece.

Tranquil even to stagnation as the life of these people may appear, it
is, nevertheless, a real and vivid life. That ancient trembling crone
who sits behind the stove opposite the great clothes-press may have been
there for a quarter of a century, and all her thinking and feeling is,
beyond a doubt, intimately blended with every corner of the stove and
the carvings of the press. And clothes-press and stove _live_--for a
human being hath breathed into them a portion of her soul.

It was only in such deeply contemplative life as this, in such "direct
relationship" between man and the things of the outer world, that the
German fairy tale could originate, the peculiarity of which consists in
the fact that in it not only animals and plants, but also objects
apparently inanimate, speak and act. To thoughtful ha