HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Bard of Democracy
A heart untameable and savage wit.
Blent with a strain of pathos infinite
The gods vouchsafed thee, and what these were worth
Thou taughtest all men from thy mattress tomb.
Giild of the Revolution wert thou, yea.
Revolt incarnate; and its meetest home
Thine aweless spirit in its brightest day
In that bright city found where now, thy doom.
Of strife fulfilled, thou restest from the fray.
Humbert Wolfe, who owed much to Heine,
composed lyrics, on three different occasions, in
tribute to his adored hero. One lyric, entitled
Heine's Last Song, was an imaginative re-creation
of the final mood of the martyr of Montmartre.
Another lyric was an epitaph that might fittingly
be carved upon the tomb of the sensitive soul that
throughout a hfetime sought to express its every
mood and that nevertheless failed to yield its innermost
secret. A third lyric was an attempted
characterization of Heine's poetry, written in the
Heine-tone, and embodied in the preface of Wolfe's
translations from the Book of Songs: ^
The nightingale, that usual bird, the rose.
The tritest of all flowers, and the spring
Duller, if possible, than both of those,
With love and pain, were all you had to sing.
These, Heinrich Heine, and some woman's face
As ordinary as a bank of daisies,
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