Such barren knowledge a while,
God gave the poet his song.
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
Bordered by statues, and walks
Terraced, and orange bowers
Heavy with fragrance, the blond
German Kaiser full oft
Longed himself back to the fields,
Rivers, and high-roofed towns
Of his native Germany; so,
So, how often! from hot
Paris drawing-rooms, and lamps
Blazing, and brilliant crowds,
Starred and jewelled, 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
Longed 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,
Checkering the grass with their shade;
Up by the stream, with its huge
Moss-hung bowlders, 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 gray hillside, -
To the stone-roofed 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-tracked steam of the wide,
Wide German land, going down
In a bank of vapors, — again
Standest, at nightfall, alone!
Or, next morning, with limbs
Rested by slumber, and heart
Freshened 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 transformed,
In a thousand water-breaks light
Pours her petulant youth;
Climbing the rock which juts
O'er the valley, — the dizzily perched
Rock, to its iron cross
Once more thou cling'st; to the cross
Clingest! with smiles, with a sigh!
Goethe too had been there.25
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 passed 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!
Other and milder be mine!
May'st thou a mood more serene,
Happier, have uttered in mine!
May'st thou the rapture of peace
Deep have imbreathed at its core ;
Made it a ray of thy thought,
Made it a beat of thy joy!
THROUGH Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is crossed, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain side.
The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the woods,
Over his boiling caldron broods.
Swift rush the spectral vapors white
Past limestone scars with ragged pines,
Showing then blotting from our sight! —
Halt
through the cloud-drift something shines!
High in the valley, wet and drear,
The huts of Courrerie appear.
Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher
Mounts up the stony forest-way.
At last the encircling trees retire ;
Look through the showery twilight gray,
What pointed roofs are these advance?
A palace of the kings of France?
Approach, for what we seek is here!
Alight, and sparely sup, and wait
For rest in this outbuilding near ;
Then cross the sward, and reach that gate;
Knock; pass the wicket. Thou art come
To the Carthusians' world-famed home.
The silent courts, where night and day
Into their stone-carved basins cold
The splashing icy fountains play,
The humid corridors behold,
Where, ghost-like in the deepening night,
Cowled forms brush by in gleaming white!
The chapel, where no organ's peal
Invests the stern and naked prayer!
With penitential cries they kneel
And wrestle; rising then, with bare
And white uplifted faces stand,
Passing the Host from hand to hand;
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