Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/156

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whole song is the legacy of his personal mood, but that was full of restless changes from tears and laughter, from melody and love and tenderness, to scorn and cynicism, and again from agnosticism to faith. In youth, and at intervals until his death, his dominant key was like Byron's,—dissatisfaction, longing, the pursuit of an illusive ideal, the love of love and fame. There was an apparent decline, after disordered years, in Byron's powers both physical and mental. Yet his Greek campaign bade fair to bring him to something better than his best. He had the soldier's temperament. Action of the heroic kind was what he needed, and might have led to the "sudden making" of a still more splendid name. Heine was many beings in one: a Jew by race, a German by birth, a Parisian by adoption, taste, and instinct for the beautiful. His outlook, then, was broader than that of the English poet. His writing was also a revolt, but against the age as that of a Jew, and against contemporary Philistinism as that of an Arcadian. Byron became a cosmopolite; Heine was born one. In the world's theatre he stood behind the scenes of the motley "Most musical, most melancholy."human drama. He wrought its plaint and laughter into a fantastic music of his own, with a genius both sorrowful and sardonic; always like one enduring life as a penance, and suffering from the acute consciousness of some finer existence the clew to which was denied him:—