No More Learning

What of Mumma? Ah, the Mumma
Is a poor weak woman! Frailty
Is her name! Alas, the women
Are as so much porcelain frail.

When the hand of Fate had parted
Mumma from her noble husband,
Neither did she die of sorrow,
Nor succumb to melancholy.

And at last a fixed appointment,
And for life a safe provision,
Far away she found at Paris
In the famed Jardin des Plantes.

Sunday last as I was walking
In the gardens with Julietta,
By the railing round the bear-pit--
Gracious Heavens! What saw we there!

'Twas a powerful desert bear
From Siberia, snow-white coated,
Playing there an over-tender,
Amorous game with some black she-bear.

And, by Jupiter! 'twas Mumma!
'Twas the wife of Atta Troll!
I remember her distinctly
By the moist eye's tender glances.


XII

Where in heaven, Master Louis,
Have you all this crazy nonsense
Scraped together? Such the question
Of the Cardinal of Este,

After having read the poem
Of Rolando's frenzied doings,
Which Ariosto with submission
To his Eminence dedicated.
Yes, Varnhagen, worthy friend,
Yes, I see the same words nearly
On thy lips this moment hanging
With the same sarcastic smile.

"Sounds this not like youthful visions,
Which I once dreamt with Chamisso
And Brentano and Fouque,
On those deep-blue moonlight evenings? "

Yes, my friend, it is the echo
Of those long-forgotten dream-days;
Only that a modern trilling
Mingles with the ancient cadence.

Other seasons, other songsters!
Other songsters, other ditties!
What a cackling, as of geese, which
Once preserved the Capitol!

Other seasons, other songsters!
Other songsters, other ditties!
I might take a pleasure also
In them had I other ears!


FOOTNOTES:

[E] Heinrich Heine was born on December 13, 1797, at
Dusseldorf, the son of Jewish parents. After quitting school he was
sent to Frankfort to the banking establishment of an uncle, but a
commercial career failed to appeal to him, and in 1819 he entered the
University of Bonn, with a view of studying for law. His thoughts,
however, were given to poetry; and 1822 saw the publication of his
first volume of poems. Up to this time he was largely dependent upon
the generosity of his uncle. Thus, in order to fulfil his obligations,
he entered the University of Gottingen, where he obtained his degree of
law, having previously qualified himself for practice by renouncing the
Jewish faith for Christianity. A voluminous prose-writer, a wonderful
satirist, and an ardent politician, Heine's present-day fame rests
largely on his poetry, and especially the wonderful lyrical pieces.
"Atta Troll" (1846), which has been described as the "Swan-song of
Romanticism," was written in the hey-day of his activities, and
admirably conveys something of the temper and genius of its many-sided
author.