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!
His bitter life,—may a life
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!