beautiful as it is, caressing as it sounds, has something of the unnaturalness which often strikes the reader in Heine's painting of nature. The colouring is vivid, but not real; local colours obtrude themselves to the detriment of the general tone. "Rothblühender," (red-blooming) is hardly the word that it would naturally occur to one to use in describing a garden seen by moonlight. In the lines: "Gegenüber am Fenster sassen _Rosengesichter_ dämmernd und _mond_beglänzt." (At the opposite window glimmered rose-faces, bright in the moonlight glow), from the later poem _Abenddämmerung_ ("Twilight"), we have the same sort of effect, produced at the same expense of naturalness. The declaration that the lotus flowers are expecting their dear sister sounds like an old-fashioned compliment in the midst of this gorgeous Ganges imagery. We have much the same expression in the stanza: "Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen Und schau'n mitleidig mich an: Sei unsrer Schwester nicht böse, Du trauriger, blasser Mann!"[4] [4] The flowers are whispering and talking; With pity my features they scan: O, pray do not chide our sister, Thou sorrowful, pale-faced man! (C. G. LELAND.) This is a madrigal style which Heine leaves behind in his later work. Another of the verses in this wonderfully emotional song of the Ganges has characteristics which point to Heine's derivation from the Romantic school, with its arbitrary interpretation of nature:-- "Die Veilchen kichern und kosen Und schau'n nach den Sternen empor."[5] [5] The violets titter, caressing, Peeping up as the planets appear. (C. G. LELAND.) It is quite audacious enough to represent violets as caressing each other; we are reminded of Hans Andersen's enchanted gardens; to make them titter is certainly too much of a good thing. Émile Zola affects this same style in his description of the Paradou garden. The next song, which is conceived in the same spirit, the song of the lotus flower that fears the splendour of the sun, is a charming poem, despite its flower-innocence, marvellously, meltingly sensuous. Sensual-spiritual desire is here intensified till it reaches the verge of hysteria; for the poet, not content with making the lotus flower blossom and glow and shine and exhale fragrance and tremble, when her lover, the moon, awakes her with his rays, actually makes her weep.[6] [6] _Cf_ W. Kirchbach: _Heine's Dichterwerkstatt_, in _Magazin für die Litteratur_, Jahrgang 57, Nr. 18, 19, 20.