h the deep,
To wreck the wandering lover,
And leave the maid to weep."

All melancholy lying,
Thus wailed she for her dear!
Repaid each blast with sighing,
Each billow with a tear.
When o'er the white wave stooping,
His floating corpse she spied,--
Then, like a lily drooping,
She bowed her head and died.

EMANUEL VON GEIBEL

(1815-1884)

[Illustration: EMANUEL VON GEIBEL]

The chief note in Geibel's nature was reverence. A spirit of reverent
piety, using the phrase in its widest as well as in its strictly
religious sense, characterizes all his poetical utterances. He
intended to devote himself to theology, but the humanistic tendencies
of the age, combined with his own peculiar endowments, led him to
abandon the Church for pure literature. The reverent attitude of mind,
however, remained, and has left its impress even upon his most
impassioned love lyrics. It appears too in his first literary venture,
a volume of 'Classical Studies' undertaken in collaboration with his
friend Ernst Curtius, in which is displayed his loving reverence for
the great monuments of Greek antiquity. He felt himself an exile from
Greece, and like Goethe's Iphigenia, his soul was seeking ever for the
land of Hellas. And through the influence of Bettina von Arnim this
longing was satisfied; he secured the post of tutor in the household
of the Russian ambassador to Athens.

Geibel was only twenty-three years of age when this good fortune fell
to his lot. He was born at Luebeck on October 18th, 1815. His poetic
gifts, early manifested, secured him a welcome in the literary circles
of Berlin. During the two years that he spent in Greece he was enabled
to travel over a large part of the Grecian Archipelago in the
inspiring company of Curtius; and it was upon their return to Germany
in 1840 that the 'Classical Studies' appeared, and were dedicated to
the Queen of Greece. Then Geibel eagerly took up the study of French
and Spanish, with the result that many valuable volumes were published
in collaboration with Paul Heyse, Count von Schack, and Leuthold,
which introduced to the German public a vast treasury of song from the
literatures of France, Spain, and Portugal. The first collection of
Geibel's own poems in 1843 secured for the poet a modest pension from
the King of Prussia.

Geibel also made several essays at dramatic composition. He wrote for
Mendelssohn the text of a 'Lorelei,' but the composer