Thus side by side flowed on the continuous streams of that wit and pathos which he poured forth inexhaustibly to the very end. No word of complaint or impatience ever passed his lips; on the contrary, with his old, irresistible humor, his fancy played about his own privations and sufferings, and tried to alleviate for his devoted wife and friends the pain of the heart-rending spectacle. His delicate consideration prompted him to spare his venerable mother all knowledge of his illness. He wrote to her every month in his customary cheerful way; and, in sending her the latest volumes of his poetry, he caused a separate copy always to be printed, from which all allusions to his malady were expunged. "For that matter," he said, "that any son could be as wretched and miserable as I, no mother would believe." Alas! if he had known how much more eloquent and noble a refutation his life would afford than his mistaken passionate response to the imputations of his enemies! Is this patient martyr the man of whom Boerne wrote: "with his sybarite nature, the fall of a rose-leaf can disturb Heine's slumber. He whom all asperities fatigue, whom all discords trouble, let such a one neither move nor think--let him go to bed and shut his eyes." Only in his last poems, which were not to be published till after his death, has Heine given free vent to the bitterness of his anguish. During the long sleepless night when he lay writhing with pain or exhausted by previous paroxysms, his mind, preternaturally clear and vigorous, conceived the glowing fantasies of the _Romancero_, or the Job-like lamentations of the _Lazarus_ poems. This mental exercise was his protection against insanity: and the thought of his cherished wife, he affirmed, was his only safeguard against the delirious desire to seize the morphine bottle by his side, and with one draught put an end to his agony. On the night of the 16th of February, 1856, came the long-craved release--and on the 20th of February without mass or "Kaddish," according to his express wish, he was buried in the cemetery of Montmartre. EARLY POEMS. SONNETS TO MY MOTHER, B. HEINE, _nee_ VON GELDERN. I. I have been wont to bear my forehead high-- My stubborn temper yields with no good grace. The king himself might look me in the face, And yet I would not downward cast mine eye. But I confess, dear mother, openly, However proud my haughty spirit swell, When I within thy blessed presence dwell, Oft am I smit with shy humility. Is it thy soul, with secret influence, Thy lofty soul piercing all shows of sense, Which soareth, heaven-born, to heaven again? Or springs it from sad memories that tell How many a time I caused thy dear heart pain, Thy gentle heart, that loveth me so well! II.