it a new set of symbols, and because the symbols become more
and more objective as the poet's horizon broadens. Then come a few
pieces of religious content (culminating in _The Pilgrimage to
Kevlaar_), the poems in the _Journey to the Hartz_ (the most striking
of which are animated by the poetry of folk-lore)--these poems clearly
transitional to the poetry of the ocean which Heine wrote with such
vigor in the two cycles on the North Sea. The movement is a steady
climax.

The truth of the foregoing observations can be tested only by an
examination of the entire _Book of Songs_. The total effect is one of
arrangement. The order of the sections is chronological; the order of
the poems within the sections is logical; and some poems were altered
to make them fit into the scheme. Each was originally the expression
of a moment; and the peculiarity of Heine as a lyric poet is his
disposition to fix a moment, however fleeting, and to utter a feeling,
of however slight consequence to humanity it might at first blush seem
to be. In the _Journey to the Hartz_ he never lost an opportunity to
make a point; in his lyrical confessions he suppressed no impulse to
self-revelation; and seldom did his mastery of form fail to ennoble
even the meanest substance.

Some of Heine's most perfect products are his smallest. Whether,
however, a slight substance can be fittingly presented only in the
briefest forms, or a larger matter calls for extended treatment, the
method is the same, and the merit lies in the justness and
suggestiveness of details. Single points, or points in juxtaposition
or in succession, not the developed continuity of a line, are the
means to the effect which Heine seeks. Connecting links are left to be
supplied by the imagination of the reader. Even in such a narrative
poem as _Belshazzar_ the movement is _staccato_; we are invited to
contemplate a series of moments; and if the subject is impiety and
swift retribution, we are left to infer the fact from the evidence
presented; there is neither editorial introduction nor moralizing
conclusion. Similarly with _The Two Grenadiers_, a presentation of
character in circumstance, a translation of pictorial details into
terms of action and prophecy; and most strikingly in _The Pilgrimage
to Kevlaar_, a poem of such fundamentally pictorial quality that it
has been called a triptych, three depicted scenes in a little
religious drama.

It is in pieces like these that we find Heine