d the reader feels what the boy was not slow to learn, that
the stately movement of the Greek stanzas lends an added dignity to the
expression of sorrow, which was to constitute so large a part of his
poetic activity. As already stated, the Alcaic measure was of all the
Greek verse-forms Hoelderlin's favorite, and the one most frequently and
successfully employed by him. He is very fond of introducing Germanic
alliteration into these unrhymed stanzas, as the following example will
illustrate:

Und wo sind Dichter, denen der Gott es gab,
Wie unsern Alten, freundlich und fromm zu sein,
Wo Weise, wie die unsern sind, die
Kalten und Kuehnen, die unbestechbarn?[57]

The Asclepiadeian stanza he employs much less frequently, the Sapphic
only once, and that with indifferent success. It was the ode, dithyramb
and hymn, the serious lyric, which Hoelderlin selected as the models for
his poetic fashion. In this purpose he was not alone, for his friend
Neuffer writes to him in 1793, with an enthusiasm which in the intensity
of expression common at the time, seems almost like an inspiration: "Die
hoehere Ode und der Hymnus, zwei in unsern Tagen, und vielleicht in allen
Zeitaltern am meisten vernachlaessigte Musen! in ihre Arme wollen wir uns
werfen, von ihren Kuessen beseelt uns aufraffen. Welche Aussichten! Dein
Hymnus an die Kuehnheit mag Dir zum Motto dienen! Mir gehe die Hoffnung
voran."[58]

But it was in the form much more than in the contents of his poems, that
Hoelderlin carried out the Greek idea. Most of his lyrics are occasional
poems, or have abstract subjects, as for example, "An die Stille," "An
die Ehre," "An den Genius der Kuehnheit," and so on. Only here and there
does he take a classic subject or introduce classic references. The
truth of the matter is, that with all his fervid enthusiasm for Hellenic
ideals, and with all his Greek cult, Hoelderlin was not the genuine
Hellenist he thought himself to be. This is due to the fact that his
turning to Greece was in its final analysis attributable rather to
selfish than to altruistic motives. He wanted to get away from the
deplorable realities about him, the things which hurt his tender soul,
and so he constructed for himself this idealized world of ancient and
modern Greece, and peopled it with his own creations.

In Hoelderlin's "Hyperion," we have the first poetic work in German which
takes modern Greece as its locality and a modern Hellene as its h