And as enjoyment of nature finds so clear an echo in the poetry of Wilhelm Müller, so also does the delight which man should have in man. Drinking songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? The reason that the poetry of wine is unknown in England and France is, that in these countries people know nothing of what lends its poetry to wine, namely, the joyous consciousness of mutual pleasure, the outpouring of hearts, the feeling of common brotherhood, which makes learned professors and divines, generals and ministers, men once more at the sound of the ringing glasses. This purely human delight in the enjoyment of life, in the flavor of the German wine, and in the yet higher flavor of the German Symposium, finds it happiest expression in the drinking songs of Wilhelm Müller. They have often been set to music by the best masters, and have long been sung by the happy and joyous. The name of the poet is often forgotten, whilst many of his songs have become popular songs, just because they were sung from the heart and soul of the German people, as the people were fifty years ago, and as the best of them still are, in spite of many changes in the Fatherland.