] This is one of the characteristic differences
between the two poets,--Heine's eye is on the present and the future,
much more than on the past; Lenau is ever mourning the happiness that is
past and gone. Logically then, thoughts of and yearnings for death are
much more frequent with Lenau than with Heine.[210]

Reverting to the point under consideration: even in those love-lyrics in
which Heine does not wilfully destroy the first serious impression by
the jingling of his harlequin's cap, as he himself styles it,[211] he
does not succeed,--with the few exceptions just referred to,--in
convincing us very deeply of the reality of his feelings. They are
either trivially or extravagantly stated. Sometimes this sense of
triviality is caused by the poet's excessive fondness for all sorts of
diminutive expressions, giving an artificial effect, an effect of
"Taendelei" to his verses. For example:

Du siehst mich an wehmuetiglich,
Und schuettelst das blonde Koepfchen,
Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich
Die Perlenthraenentroepfchen.[212]

Sometimes this effect is produced by a distinct though unintended
anti-climax. Nowhere has Heine struck a more truly elegiac note than in
the stanza:

Der Tod, das ist die kuehle Nacht,
Das Leben ist der schwuele Tag.
Es dunkelt schon, mich schlaefert,
Der Tag hat mich muede gemacht.[213]

There is the most profound Weltschmerz in that. But in the second stanza
there is relatively little:

Ueber mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum,
Drin singt die junge Nachtigall;
Sie singt von lauter Liebe,
Ich hoer' es sogar im Traum.

Lenau's lyrics have shown that much Weltschmerz may grow out of
unsatisfied love; Heine's demonstrate that mere love sickness is not
Weltschmerz. The fact is that Heine frequently destroys what would have
been a certain impression of Weltschmerz by forcing upon us the
immediate cause of his distemper,--it may be a real injury, or merely a
passing annoyance. What a strange mixture of acrimonious, sarcastic
protest and Weltschmerz elements we find in the poem "Ruhelechzend"[214]
of which a few stanzas will serve to illustrate. Again he strikes a full
minor chord:

Las bluten deine Wunden, lass
Die Thraenen fliessen unaufhaltsam;
Geheime Wollust schwelgt im Schmerz,
Und Weinen ist ein suesser Balsam.

This in practice rather than in theory is what we observe in Lenau,--his
melancholy satisfaction in nursing