* * * *
The little harper must have remarked, that while she was singing and playing, I looked often at the rose upon her breast; and as I afterwards threw upon the tin plate, with which she collected her honorarium, a piece of gold, and not of the smallest, she smiled slily, and asked me secretly, if I wanted her rose.
* * * *
Think no evil, dear reader. It had grown dark, and the stars looked so pure and pious down into my heart. In that heart itself, however, trembled the memory of the dead Maria. I thought again of that night, when I stood beside the bed, where lay her beautiful, pale form, with soft, still lips—I thought again of the strange look the old woman cast at me, who was to watch by the dead body, and surrendered her charge to me for a few hours—I thought again of the night-violet, that stood in a glass upon the table, and smelt so strangely. Again I shuddered with the doubt, whether it were really a draft of wind, that blew the lamp out?—or whether there were a third person in the chamber!
Reisebilder, Vol. 3.
——
The minor poems of Heine, like most of his prose writings, are but a portrait of himself. The same melancholy tone,—the same endless sigh,—pervades them. Though they possess the highest lyric merit they are for the most part fragmentary;—expressions of some momentary state of feeling,—sudden ejaculations of pain or pleasure, of restlessness, impatience, regret, longing, love. They profess to be songs, and as songs must they be judged, and as German Songs. Then these imperfect expressions of feeling,—these mere suggestions of thought,—this “luminous mist,” that half reveals, half hides the sense,—this selection of topics from scenes of every day life, and in fine this prevailing tone of sentimental sadness, will not seem affected, misplaced nor exaggerated. At the same time it must be confessed that the trivial and common-place recur too frequently in these songs. Here, likewise, as in the prose of Heine, the lofty aim is wanting; we listen in vain for the spirit-stirring note—for the word of power—for those ancestral melodies, which, amid the uproar of the world, breathe in our ears forever-more the voices of consolation, encouragement and warning. Heine is not sufficiently in earnest to be a great poet.
TO ONE DEPARTED.
———