In the first song the hero tells of his lost sweetheart, and sings to the memory of her a touching ‘Good-night’ lullaby. The second hears the wind playing about the roof of the house, and suggests that even so circumstances play with man’s heart. In the third he finds the cold air freezing his tears--thus his very sorrow has become fixed and rigid. The fourth is a vision of the world paralyzed in the cold of winter: his heart is frozen and her picture is blotted out of it. In the fifth he remembers the linden tree under which they spent their happiest hours. So the songs go, one after another. The ninth is the ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ song; he will not be misled by these false lights, for his heart has been misled by such beacons before. In the next, ‘Rest,’ the hero tells how he is so occupied by the pain of his travelling and the pain of his sorrow that only when he lays his body down to rest at night does he realize how tired he is. From this point on the great songs of the cycle are numerous. The thirteenth, ‘The Post,’ pictures the galloping of the approaching mail coach, with the blowing of its horn. Is there a letter for him? No, for he is alone in the wide world. The post departs--in a minor key. In the fourteenth song, _Der greise Kopf_, he notices that the frost has made his hair white, and he thinks of himself as an old man, and wishes he could be many years removed from his sorrow. In the long and somewhat descriptive song, _Im Dorfe_, he enters a village and the dogs bark at the lonely wanderer; even so the world is strange and hostile to him. In _Täuschung_ (‘Illusion’) he sees a light in the distance, and hopes it comes from a hospitable farmhouse. But, alas! the light was an illusion, like the rest of the things we hope for in life. Then come five final songs--every one a masterpiece of the first order. The _Wegweiser_ tells of the sign-post the hero sees on the road. But there is another sign-post which is also directing him on his longer road and it points relentlessly the way to Death. Yet, in the next song, _Das Wirtshaus_, when he approaches a graveyard, he finds no welcome awaiting: the rooms of this tavern are all occupied. Death itself will not soothe his loneliness. In the next song, ‘Courage,’ he makes a final despairing effort to free himself from his misery by pure force of will-power. If the snow flies in his face, he will dash it aside. He will laugh loud and merrily. If life is an illusion, he will _make_ it worth while. If there are no gods on earth, we ourselves shall be gods. But this mood cannot last. He sees two false suns in the heavens, in addition to the one that has always been there. But they vanish, like the two suns of earlier years--the eyes of his beloved. Only one more sun need vanish and blessed night will come for him.