HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Bard of Democracy
refuge in levity and a passion, which, as if ashamed
of its barren impotence, puts on the ribald cap and
bells of the professed wit and licensed humorist." •*
In 1906, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary
of Heine's death, Horace B. Samuel paid
tribute to him, in the Fortnightly Review, as one
of the most complex of modem poets, one \\ ho
combined the beautiful, the grand, and the tragic,
with the ugly, the petty, and the comic. In a prefatory
sonnet, Samuel interpreted the Janus-hke nature
of the adored poet: ^
Life has two faces Janus-like, the one
Grim, old, grotesque; a foul and dark wound sears
Its riven visage, and a grin it wears
Alaughs its own grotesqueness; dauntless, lone,
It stares the void, but worst of all undergone.
How dead this cold security from fears;
Yet ever and anon life's mortal tears
Roll slowly down, each as a silent stone.
The other smooth and young and all afire
With the Love and Light and Laughter of the earth,
Bright as the golden chords of a mystic lyre
Singing a sweet ineffable refrain,
A faery fantasy of delicate mirth;
And thou, O Heine, art Life's faces twain.
Tributes in verse were not infrequent ever since
Arnold's poem, "Heine's Grave." ^ They furnished
additional evidence of the fascination he exercised
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