V. WILHELM MÜLLER.[13] 1794-1827.

Seldom has a poet in a short life of thirty years engraven his name so deeply on the memorial tablets of the history of German poetry as Wilhelm Müller. Although the youthful efforts of a poet may be appreciated by those few who are able to admire what is good and beautiful, even though it has never before been admired by others, yet in order permanently to win the ear and heart of his people, a poet must live with the people, and take part in the movements and struggles of his age. Thus only can he hope to stir and mould the thoughts of his contemporaries, and to remain a permanent living power in the recollections of his countrymen. Wilhelm Müller died at the very moment when the rich blossoms of his poetic genius were forming fruit; and after he had warmed and quickened the hearts of the youth of Germany with the lyric songs of his own youth, only a short span of time was granted him to show the world, as he did more especially in his “Greek Songs” and “Epigrams,” [pg 101] the higher goal toward which he aspired. In these his last works one readily perceives that his poetry would not have reflected the happy dreams of youth only, but that he could perceive the poetry of life in its sorrows as clearly as in its joys, and depict it in true and vivid colors.

One may, I think, divide the friends and admirers of Wilhelm Müller into two classes: those who rejoice and delight in his fresh and joyous songs, and those who admire the nobleness and force of his character as shown in the poems celebrating the war of Greek independence, and in his epigrams. All poetry is not for every one, nor for every one at all times. There are critics and historians of literature who cannot tolerate songs of youth, of love, and of wine; they always ask “why?” and “wherefore?” and they demand in all poetry, before anything else, high or deep thoughts. No doubt there can be no poetry without thought, but there are thoughts which are poetical without being drawn from the deepest depths of the heart and brain, nay, which are poetical just because they are as simple and true and natural as the flowers of the field or the stars of heaven. There is a poetry for the old, but there is also a poetry for the young. The young demand in poetry an interpretation of their own youthful feelings, and first learn truly to understand themselves through those poets who speak for them as they would speak for themselves, had nature endowed them with melody of thought and harmony of diction. Youth is and will remain the majority of the world, and will let no gloomy brow rob it of its poetic enthusiasm for young love and old wine. True, youth is not over-critical; true, it does not know how to speak or write in learned phrases of the merits of its favorite [pg 102] poets. But for all that, where is the poet who would not rather live in the warm recollection of the never-dying youth of his nation than in voluminous encyclopædias, or even in the marble Walhallas of Germany? The story and the songs of a miller's man who loves his master's daughter, and of a miller's daughter who loves a huntsman better, may seem very trivial, commonplace, and unpoetical to many a man of forty or fifty. But there are men of forty and fifty who have never lost sight of the bright but now far-off days of their own youth, who can still rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep, and love with those that love,—aye, who can still fill their glasses with old and young, and in whose eyes every-day life has not destroyed the poetic bloom that rests everywhere on life so long as it is lived with warm and natural feelings. Songs which, like the “Beautiful Miller's Daughter” and the “Winter Journey,” could so penetrate and again spring forth from the soul of Franz Schubert, may well stir the very depths of our own hearts, without the need of fearing the wise looks of those who possess the art of saying nothing in many words. Why should poetry be less free than painting to seek for what is beautiful wherever a human eye can discover, wherever human art can imitate it? No one blames the painter if, instead of giddy peaks or towering waves, he delineates on his canvas a quiet narrow valley, filled with a green mist, and enlivened only by a gray mill and a dark brown mill-wheel, from which the spray rises like silver dust, and then floats away, and vanishes in the rays of the sun. Is what is not too common for the painter, too common for the poet? Is an idyl in the truest, warmest, softest colors of the soul, like the [pg 103] “Beautiful Miller's Daughter,” less a work of art than a landscape by Ruysdael? And observe in these songs how the execution suits the subject; their tone is thoroughly popular, and reminds many of us, perhaps too much, of the popular songs collected by Arnim and Brentano in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” But this could not be helped. Theocritus could not write his idyls in grand Attic Greek; he needed the homeliness of the Bœotian dialect. It was the same with Wilhelm Müller, who must not be blamed for expressions which now perhaps, more than formerly, may sound, to fastidious ears, too homely or commonplace.

His simple and natural conception of nature is shown most beautifully in the “Wanderer's Songs,” and in the “Spring Wreath from the Plauen Valley.” Nowhere do we find a labored thought or a labored word. The lovely spring world is depicted exactly as it is, but over all is thrown the life and inspiration of a poet's eye and a poet's mind, which perceives and gives utterance to what others fail to see, and silent nature cannot utter. It is this recognition of the beautiful in what is insignificant, of greatness in what is small, of the marvelous in ordinary life,—yes, this perception of the divine in every earthly enjoyment,—which gives its own charm to each of Wilhelm Müller's smallest poems, and endears them so truly to those who, amidst the hurry of life, have not forgotten the delight of absorption in nature, who have never lost their faith in the mystery of the divine presence in all that is beautiful, good, and true on earth. We need only read the “Frühlingsmahl,” or “Pfingsten” to see how a whole world, aye, a whole heaven, may be mirrored in the tiniest drop of dew.

And as enjoyment of nature finds so clear an echo [pg 104] in the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, so also does the delight which man should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? The reason that the poetry of wine is unknown in England and France is, that in these countries people know nothing of what lends its poetry to wine, namely, the joyous consciousness of mutual pleasure, the outpouring of hearts, the feeling of common brotherhood, which makes learned professors and divines, generals and ministers, men once more at the sound of the ringing glasses. This purely human delight in the enjoyment of life, in the flavor of the German wine, and in the yet higher flavor of the German Symposium, finds it happiest expression in the drinking songs of Wilhelm Müller. They have often been set to music by the best masters, and have long been sung by the happy and joyous. The name of the poet is often forgotten, whilst many of his songs have become popular songs, just because they were sung from the heart and soul of the German people, as the people were fifty years ago, and as the best of them still are, in spite of many changes in the Fatherland.

It is easy to see that a serious tone is not wanting even in the drinking songs. The wine was good, but the times were bad. Those who, like Wilhelm Müller, had shared in the great sufferings and the great [pg 105] hopes of the German people, and who then saw that after all the sacrifices that had been made, all was in vain, all was again as bad or even worse than before, could with difficulty conceal their disaffection, however helpless they felt themselves against the brutalities of those in power. Many, who like Wilhelm Müller had labored to reanimate German popular feeling; who like him had left the university to sacrifice as common soldiers their life and life's happiness to the freedom of the Fatherland, and who then saw how the terror felt by the scarcely rescued princes of their deliverers, and the fear of foreign nations of a united and strong Germany, joined hand in hand to destroy the precious seed sown in blood and tears,—could not always suppress their gloomy anger at such faint-hearted, weak-minded policy. On the first of January, 1820, Wilhelm Müller wrote thus, in the dedication of the second part of his “Letters from Rome” to his friend Atterbom, the Swedish poet, with whom he had but a short time before passed the Carnival time in Italy joyously and carelessly: “And thus I greet you in your old sacred Fatherland, not jokingly and merrily, like the book, whose writer seems to have become a stranger to me, but earnestly and briefly; for the great fast of the European world, expecting the passion, and waiting for deliverance, can endure no indifferent shrug of the shoulders and no hollow compromises and excuses. He who cannot act at this time, can yet rest and mourn.” For such words, veiled as they were, resigned as they were, the fortress of Mayence was at that time the usual answer.

“Deutsch und frei und stark und lauter