Learn to know the sense of dying,
And the word of life discover;
Hither turn at last.
Soon will all thy power be over,
Borrowed light away be flying,
Soon art fettered, O Earth-spirit,
And thy time of empire past.
This poem was perhaps a prologue to a second chapter. Now an entirely new period of the work would have opened; the highest life proceeding from the stillest death; he has lived among the dead and conversed with them. Now the book would have become nearly dramatic, the epic tone, as it were, uniting together and simply explaining the single scenes. Henry suddenly finds himself in Italy, distracted, rent with wars; he sees himself the leader of an army. All the elements of war play in poetic colors. With an irregular band, he attacks a hostile city; here appears in episode the love of a noble of Pisa for a Florentine maiden. War-songs--"a great war, like a duel, noble, philosophical, human throughout. Spirit of the old chivalry; the tournament. Spirit of bacchanalian sadness.[4] Men must fall by each other,--nobler than to fall by fate. They seek death.--Honor, fame, is the warrior's joy and life. The warrior lives in death and like a shade. Desire for death is the warrior-spirit. Upon the earth is war at home; it must be upon earth."--In Pisa Henry finds the Son of Frederick the Second, who becomes his confidential friend. He also travels to Loretto. Several songs were to follow here.
The poet is cast away on the shores of Greece by a tempest. The old world with its heroes and treasures of art fills his mind. He converses with a Grecian about morality. Everything from ancient times is present to him; he learns to understand the old pictures and histories. Conversation upon Grecian polity and mythology.
After becoming acquainted with the heroic age and with antiquity, he visits the Holy Land, for which he had felt so great a longing from his youth. He seeks Jerusalem, and acquaints himself with Oriental poetry. Strange events among the infidels detain him in desert regions; he discovers the family of the eastern girl (see [Part I].): the manners and life of nomadic tribes.--Persian tales, recollections of the remotest antiquity. The book during all these various events was to retain its characteristic hue, and recall to mind the blue flower: throughout, the most distant and distinct traditions were to be knit together, Grecian, Oriental, Biblical, Christian, with reminiscences of and references to both the Indian and Northern mythology.--The Crusades.--Life at sea.-- Henry visits Rome. Roman history.