ben_, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him
with a highly-wrought art without previous example in German
literature.

Herz, mein Herz, was soll das geben?
Was bedraenget dich so sehr?
Welch ein fremdes neues Leben!
Ich erkenne dich nicht mehr.
Weg ist alles, was du liebtest,
Weg, warum du dich betruebtest,
Weg dein Fleiss und deine Ruh'--
Ach, wie kamst du nur dazu!

Fesselt dich die Jugendbluete,
Diese liebliche Gestalt,
Dieser Blick voll Treu' und Guete
Mit unendlicher Gewalt?
Will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen,
Mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen,
Fuehret mich im Augenblick
Ach, mein Weg zu ihr zurueck.

Und an diesem Zauberfaedchen,
Das sich nicht zerreissen laesst,
Haelt das liebe, lose Maedchen
Mich so wider Willen fest;
Muss in ihrem Zauberkreise
Leben nun auf ihre Weise.
Die Veraend'rung, ach, wie gross!
Liebe! Liebe, lass mich los!

Say, heart of me, what this importeth;
What distresseth thee so sore?
New and strange all life and living;
Thee I recognise no more.
Gone is everything thou loved'st;
All for which thyself thou troubled'st;
Gone thy toil, and gone thy peace;
Ah! how cam'st thou in such case?

Fetters thee that youthful freshness?
Fetters thee that lovely mien?
That glance so full of truth and goodness,
With an adamantine chain?
Vain the hardy wish to tear me
From those meshes that ensnare me;
For the moment I would flee,
Straight my path leads back to thee.

By these slender threads enchanted,
Which to rend no power avails,
That dear wanton maiden holds me
Thus relentless in her spells.
Thus within her charmed round
Must I live as one spellbound;
Heart! what mighty change in thee;
Love, O love, ah, set me free!

In the second lyric, _An Belinden_, he pictures in the same tone of
half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an
eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. He who had lately
spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber
dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an
alien and uncongenial world. Is he the same being who now sits at the
card-table amid the glaring lights of a fashionable drawing-room in
the presence of hateful faces? For her, however, he wil