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Therefore a secret unrest
Tortured thee, brilliant and bold!
Therefore triumph itself
Tasted amiss to thy soul.
Therefore, with blood of thy foes,
Trickled in silence thine own.
Therefore the victor’s heart
Broke on the field of his fame.

Ah! as of old, from the pomp
Of Italian Milan, the fair
Flower of marble of white
Southern palaces–steps
Border’d by statues, and walks
Terraced, and orange-bowers
Heavy with fragrance–the blond
German Kaiser full oft
Long’d himself back to the fields,
Rivers, and high-roof’d towns
Of his native Germany; so,
So, how often! from hot
Paris drawing-rooms, and lamps
Blazing, and brilliant crowds,
Starr’d and jewell’d, of men
Famous, of women the queens
Of dazzling converse–from fumes
Of praise, hot, heady fumes, to the poor brain
That mount, that madden–how oft
Heine’s spirit outworn
Long’d itself out of the din,
Back to the tranquil, the cool
Far German home of his youth!

See! in the May-afternoon,
O’er the fresh, short turf of the Hartz,
A youth, with the foot of youth,
Heine! thou climbest again!
Up, through the tall dark firs
Warming their heads in the sun,
Chequering the grass with their shade–
Up, by the stream, with its huge
Moss-hung boulders, and thin
Musical water half-hid–
Up, o’er the rock-strewn slope,
With the sinking sun, and the air
Chill, and the shadows now
Long on the grey hill-side–
To the stone-roof’d hut at the top!

Or, yet later, in watch
On the roof of the Brocken-tower
Thou standest, gazing!–to see
The broad red sun, over field,
Forest, and city, and spire,
And mist-track’d stream of the wide,
Wide German land, going down
In a bank of vapours—-again
Standest, at nightfall, alone!

Or, next morning, with limbs
Rested by slumber, and heart
Freshen’d and light with the May,
O’er the gracious spurs coming down
Of the Lower Hartz, among oaks,
And beechen coverts, and copse
Of hazels green in whose depth
Ilse, the fairy transform’d,
In a thousand water-breaks light
Pours her petulant youth–
Climbing the rock which juts
O’er the valley, the dizzily perch’d
Rock–to its iron cross
Once more thou cling’st; to the Cross
Clingest! with smiles, with a sigh!

Goethe, too, had been there.[1]
In the long-past winter he came
To the frozen Hartz, with his soul
Passionate, eager–his youth
All in ferment!–but he
Destined to work and to live
Left it, and thou, alas!
Only to laugh and to die.

But something prompts me: Not thus
Take leave of Heine! not thus
Speak the last word at his grave!
Not in pity, and not
With half censure–with awe
Hail, as it passes from earth
Scattering lightnings, that soul!

The Spirit of the world,
Beholding the absurdity of men–
Their vaunts, their feats–let a sardonic smile,
For one short moment, wander o’er his lips.
That smile was Heine!–for its earthly hour
The strange guest sparkled; now ’tis pass’d away.

That was Heine! and we,
Myriads who live, who have lived,
What are we all, but a mood,
A single mood, of the life
Of the Spirit in whom we exist,
Who alone is all things in one?

Spirit, who fillest us all!
Spirit, who utterest in each
New-coming son of mankind
Such of thy thoughts as thou wilt!
O thou, one of whose moods,
Bitter and strange, was the life
Of Heine–his strange, alas,
His bitter life!–may a life
Other and milder be mine!
May’st thou a mood more serene,
Happier, have utter’d in mine!
May’st thou the rapture of peace
Deep have embreathed at its core;
Made it a ray of thy thought,
Made it a beat of thy joy!

[Footnote 1:

Goethe, too, had been there.

See Harzreise im Winter, in Goethe’s Gedichte.]