13. GUT UND HAB (usually Hab und Gut ), possessions; render, all that I have.
15. OB, compare 3.
100. The grief and woe of Nature held by the fetters of winter personified by this nymph climbing the " Seebaum," whose branches are held by the ice. A mythical creation such as Böcklin delighted in.
12. GLIED UM GLIED, limb upon limb, i.e., each separate limb.
14. HER UND HIN, forth and back.
16. The very sound of this line is a cry of pity.
101. Written 1879. Theodor Storm called it the best lyric poem since Goethe. Compare C. F. Meyer's letter to Keller congratulating him on his seventieth birthday. Meyer praises Keller's poetry because of its " innere Heiterkeit," and continues: " Auch meine ich, daß Ihr fester Glaube an die Güte des Daseins die höchste Bedeutung Ihrer Schriften ist. Ihnen ist wahrhaftig nichts zu wünschen als die Beharrung in Ihrem Wesen. Weil Sie die Erde lieben, wird die Erde Sie auch so lange als möglich festhalten. "
STORM
Theodor Storm, like Friedrich Hebbel, is a child of the North Sea Plain; but while in Hebbel's verse there is hardly any direct reference to his native landscape, Storm again and again sings its chaste beauty; and while Hebbel could find a home away from his native heath, Storm clung to it with a jealous love. He was born in Husum ( die graue Stadt am grauen Meer ) on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein, September 14, 1817, of well-to-do parents. While still a student of law, he published a first volume of verse together with Tycho and Theodor Mommsen. His favorite poets were Eichendorff and Mörike, and the influence of the former is plainly discernible even in Storm's later verse. Storm left his home in 1851 and did not return until 1864, after Schleswig-Holstein had become German. He died July 4, 1888.
Storm is the poet of the North Sea Plain: he discovered its peculiar beauty. While the tragic note predominates, joy and humor nevertheless abound, and at the beginning of his poems Storm himself significantly placed his Oktoberlied, written in the political gloom and uncertainty of the fall of 1848. While realizing fully its inherent tragic elements, Storm loved and glorified life and thirstily drank in its beauty to the very last. This is the keynote of Storm's lyrics.