712 POETRY 



any other nation to the Middle Ages, because, with their Christianity, 

 they had retained in their imagination something of their old prime- 

 val beliefs about Nature, and because their pure unmixed language was 

 qualified to give expression to this ancient unconscious association of 

 ideas. To a certain extent their poetic faculty was shared by other 

 branches of the Teutonic and Celtic races, and Wordsworth notices 

 the mysterious effect in his stanza describing the unconscious song of 

 the Highland Maiden : 



Will no one tell me what she sings ? 



Perhaps the mournful numbers flow 

 For old forgotten, far-off things, 



And battles long ago. 



But as the folk-lore of Germany is far richer and wilder than that of 

 England, in proportion as it has kept clearer of the stream of Hellenic 

 civilization, so is it better adapted, by the simple domesticity of its 

 imagery, to touch what may be called the universal Gothic heart of 

 modern Europe. 



It is in this spiritual elfin region that Goethe and Heine find the 

 largest freedom for their imagination. In their verse we listen to 

 mysterious voices from the pine-trees rustling outside the windows of 

 the lonely cottage in the mountains, or to strange primeval colloquies 

 between plants and animals; the white gleam of the Siren's body is 

 perceived in the whirlpool; small armies of dwarfs and kobolds creep 

 out of the bowels of the earth. Xot in the bitter Mephistophelian cyni- 

 cism with which Heine often thinks it fine, in Byronic fashion, to 

 close his pathetic lyrics, not there do we feel the genuine heart of the 

 poet, but in those self-forgetful reveries, tender and mysterious as the 

 folk-songs of Marguerite, in which he talks in their own language to 

 the peasants of the Harz mountains. Witness that unequaled cottage 

 scene, where the little maiden whispers her beliefs with pleasing trepi- 

 dation to her lover by the sinking fire: 



Little folk and tiny people 

 Bread and bacon leave us none; 

 Late at night 'tis in the cupboard, 

 In the morning it is gone. 



Little people to the cream-bowl 

 Come by night and take the best; 

 And they leave the bowl uncovered, 

 And the cat laps up the rest. 



And the cat's an old witch-woman 

 Who, at midnight's stormiest hour, 

 Often in the hauhted mountains 

 Crawls on the old ruined tower. 



