.......................... Ye!
Whose agonies are evils of a day--
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.[261]

And in contemplating the ruins of the Palatine Hill:

..................... Upon such a shrine
What are our petty griefs? Let me not number mine.[262]

Here we have the essential difference between these two types of
Weltschmerz. Heine does not, like Byron, make this transition from the
personal to the universal stage. Instead of becoming cosmic in his
Weltschmerz, he remains for ever egoistic.

Numerous quotations might be adduced from the writings of both poets,
which would seem to indicate that Heine had borrowed many of his ideas
and even some forms of expression from Byron. Except in the case of the
most literal correspondence, this is generally a very unsafe deduction.
Such passages as a rule prove nothing more than a similarity, possibly
quite independent, in the trend of their pessimistic thought. Compare
for example Byron's lines in the poem "And wilt thou weep when I am
low?"

Oh lady! blessed be that tear--
It falls for one who cannot weep;
Such precious drops are doubly dear
To those whose eyes no tear may steep,[263]

with Heine's stanza:

Seit ich sie verloren hab',
Schafft' ich auch das Weinen ab;
Fast vor Weh das Herz mir bricht,
Aber weinen kann ich nicht.[264]

Or again, "Childe Harold," IV, 136:

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy
Have I not seen what human things could do?
From the loud roar of foaming calumny
To the small whisper of the as paltry few--
And subtler venom of the reptile crew,[265]

with the first lines of Heine's ninth sonnet:

Ich moechte weinen, doch ich kann es nicht;
Ich moecht' mich ruestig in die Hoehe heben,
Doch kann ich's nicht; am Boden muss ich kleben,
Umkraechzt, umzischt von eklem Wurmgezuecht,[266]

a thought which in one of his letters (1823) he paraphrases thus: "Der
Gedanke an Dich, liebe Schwester, muss mich zuweilen aufrecht halten,
wenn die grosse Masse mit ihrem dummen Hass und ihrer ekelhaften Liebe
mich niederdrueckt."[267] There can be no doubt that Heine for a time
studied diligently to imitate this fashionable model, pose, irony and
all. So diligently perhaps, that he himself was sometimes unable to
distinglish between imitation and reality. So at least it would appear
from No. 44 of "Die Heimkehr:"

Ach Gott! im Scherz und unbewusst