s, but
does not complete the picture. In the second strophe we learn rather
more; we learn that the beloved German oak is broken, that the
language--thank God, not the women--has been violated, and we find it
quite natural that revenge should blaze up at last, even though we
cannot escape a slight feeling of surprise that dishonor, shame and such
like, already lay _behind_ those heroes, and therefore had been endured.
We have already tasted of the sweets of the third strophe; in spite of
this, we see there is a great deal still remaining in this strophe, a
happy hope, a golden future, a whole heaven, etc., etc.--it must be the
fault of my eyes that, notwithstanding, I can see nothing at all in it.
In the fourth strophe courage comes along on regular seven league boots,
and I wish the critic had as much reason to be satisfied with its
contents, as had the Fatherland, to which a splendid vow is sworn
therein. The fifth strophe contains a real human sentiment; it might
exclaim with Falstaff, "Heaven send me better company!" In the sixth
strophe we learn that the poet was not blustering in the fourth strophe,
but that the fighting is really going to begin: at the same time it
contains the principal beauty of the song, namely the end. Now, I ask,
apart from the school-boyish, crude composition of the poem, which
throws suspicion merely on the taste, not precisely on the power, of a
poet--where is even the faintest tinge of poetry? And the muse was a
battle!

We have finished, then, with the poetic part of this poem; it now
remains to investigate in how far it is a real German product, that is
to say, such an one as could have been produced only on German soil by a
German. Every one will find that it might very easily have been written
by some person from the Sultan's seraglio, and used by any people who
found themselves in a like situation. Even the French, although it is
directed against them, could gain inspiration from it, if their good
taste did not preserve them from doing so. Let no one throw the German
oaks (strophe four) in my way; I must stumble along over whole oak
trees.

Let us now compare with Koerner's _Battle-Song of the Confederation_,
Kleist's poem _To Germany_, as I believe it is called. I am glad that I
am not able to characterize the separate strophes of _this_ poem; they
are, what the divisions of a poem should be, nothing, when they are
detached from the whole. "Germans," exclaims the poet--"Your fore