HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Hellenist and Cultural Pessimist
lyricist whom the late Victorians held in high acclaim
and whose sensational crusade against Rossetti,
Swinburne, and the "Fleshly School of
Poetry" was long remembered. Buchanan entitled
his lyric The Last Song of Apollo.^ Bewailing the
end of the Olympian dynasty and lamenting the
passing of beauty and passion from the earth, the
sun-god turns to his beloved lyre for the last time
and intones a chant of the twilight of paganism:
0 Lyre! O Lyre!
Strung with celestial fire!
Thou living soul of sound that answereth
These fingers that have troubled thee so long,
With passion, and with beauty, and with breath
Of melancholy song, —
Answer, answer, answer me.
With thy mournful melody!
For the earth is old, and strange
Mysteries are working change,
And the Dead who slumber'd deep
Startle sobbing in their sleep.
And the ancient gods divine,
Wan and weary o'er their wine,
Fade in their ghastly banquet-halls, with large eyes fixed
on mine!
Ah me! ah me!
The earth and air and sea
Are shaken; and the great pale gods sit still,
The roseate mists around them roll away; —
Lo! Hebe falters in the act to fill,
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