song of the poet divine." And in a strange close to his poem—in a thought of which Arnold seems to think far more highly than he ought to think, for it is intolerably fantastic—he makes Heine to be the incarnation of a momentary bitter mood of the Spirit of the world.
Beholding the absurdity of men—
Their vaunts, their feats—let a sardonic smile
For one short moment, wander o'er his lips.
That smile was Heine!—for its earthly hour
The strange guest sparkled; now 't is pass'd away.
This is not as true as he thinks. Heine was much more than that. Far more than half of his bitterness was born of lovingness the fulness of which he could not exercise, of natural and excusable feeling against his terrible fate. He cried aloud at it; the poet must speak; but, in reality, no man could have borne that fate more resolutely, nor did he lose love in it. Nor could Arnold, when he wrote these lines, have known the poems where Heine's better soul went forth to feel with man and to fight man's battle, to stand as a lonely sentinel when he could fight no more, and to die alone, in the night at his outpost, for the cause of the whole army. I cannot quote the whole of the poem, the Enfant perdu, but here are the first and the last verses—
Hielt ich seit dreissig Jahren treulich aus.
Ich kämpte ohne Hoffnung, dass ich siege,
Ich wusste, nie komm'ich gesund nach Haus.
