"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,
Hat Gewalt vom höchsten Gott,
Heut wetzt er das Messer,
Es schneid't schon viel besser,
Bald wird er drein schneiden,
Wir müssen's nur leiden;
Hüte dich, schön's Blümelein!"
Brentano's lines are more polished:—
"Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod,
Er mäht das Korn, wenn Gott's gebot,
Schon wetzt er die Sense,
Dass schneidend sie glänze;
Bald wird er dich schneiden,
Du musst es nur leiden;
Musst in den Erntekranz hinein;
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"
In their original form the following lines are not only simpler, but more beautiful than in Brentano's version:—
"Viel hundert Tausend ungezählt,
Was nur unter die Sichel fällt,
Ihr Rosen, Ihr Liljen,
Euch wird er austilgen.
Auch die Kaiserkronen
Wird er nicht verschonen.
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"
Brentano's run thus:—
"Viel hunderttausend ohne Zahl,
Ihr sinket durch der Sense Strahl;
Weh' Rosen, weh' Lilien,
Weh' krause Basilien!
Selbst euch Kaiserkronen
Wird er nicht verschonen.
Ihr müsst zum Erntekranz hinein.
Hüte dich, schönes Blümelein!"
He spins out the six verses of the old song to fourteen by the aid of a long list of flowers and plants; we are out of breath before we get to the end of them. The volume of poems entitled Die Romanzen vom Rosenkranz ("Romances of the Rosary") is a romantic variation of the Faust legend, showing the evil of thirst for knowledge and pride of it. Faust himself is transformed into the Mephistophelian evil principle. In this work, as well as in "Loreley," Brentano prepares the way for Heinrich Heine. The romances are written in four-footed trochees, which in their cadence and whole character anticipate Heine's trochaic verse, especially in the droll juxtaposition of light, graceful lines and lines consisting of learned names, obscure legal matter, and scraps of mediæval mystic jargon.
As a prose writer, Brentano began, with his Godwi, in the style of Lucinde. The first part of the book assumes that true morality consists in allowing the sensual instincts free play, and immorality in repressing or ignoring them. With bacchantic wildness the heroine preaches the gospel of free love, and denounces marriage and every species of compulsory virtue. The second part, in genuine Romantic fashion, satirises the first part and the characters delineated in it. Godwi, the hero of the first volume, retires into the background, and the author himself, under the pseudonym Maria, takes his place. We learn that it was simply with the view of obtaining the hand of the daughter of one of the personages in the first part of the book, that the author managed to gain possession of the correspondence of which that first part consists. He had hoped by publishing it to attain this end. But, as the first volume is not approved of, he takes it to Godwi, the principal character, and begs him to tell what other love adventures he has had. The astounded Godwi reads his own story. Book in hand, he conducts the author round his garden, and says, pointing to a pond: "This is the pond into which I fall on page 266 of the first volume." Thus in Godwi we have Romantic sensual licence in combination with Romantic irony and selfduplication.
The revulsion from revolutionary ardour and passion was even more complete in Brentano's case than in Fr. Schlegel's; it became positive renunciation of reason. And his conversion, like Zacharias Werner's, was of the species accompanied by a tearful conviction of sin. In his Sketch of the Life of Anna Catharina Emmerich he tells, without giving a thought to any possible physiological explanation of the fact, that her longing for the Holy Sacrament was so great, that often at night, feeling herself irresistibly drawn to it, she left her cell, and was found in the morning kneeling with outstretched arms outside the locked church door. It never occurred to him that her condition might be a morbid one, not even when she told him all the particulars of the appearance of the stigmata on her body as if the whole thing had happened to another nun of the neighbourhood.