Platen's poetry falls into two periods--the early German tentative
period and the later or foreign period, the poems of which were mostly
written in Italy and in imitation of, or adapted from, foreign metres.
Platen is always represented as a master of form, and, since
Jacob Grimm's characterization of him, has been accused of "marble
coldness." That Platen handled difficult metres with virtuosity is not
to be laid against him; it is to the advantage of German verse that
such poems as his _ghasels_ made indigenous, in part, the feeling for
mere beauty in verse. German poets have too often gone the road of
mere formlessness. Platen cultivated style, polished and revised his
lines with as great care as did his arch-enemy Heine, and it is only
a confession of lack of ear to refuse him the name of poet. No one who
reads his Polish Songs can help feeling that they are the products of
fire and inspiration.
It must be confessed, however, that there is in Platen a remarkable
lack of inner experience. He went through life without ever having
been shaken to the depths of his nature and was, unfortunately, not of
so Olympian a calmness that, like Goethe, he could present the world
in plastic repose and sublimity. With all his refinement and fervor he
has left but few poems of lasting interest, and of these _The Grave in
the Busento_ is perhaps the best.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC HORN]
_LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM AND CLEMENS BRENTANO_
* * * * *
THE BOY'S MAGIC HORN[7] (1806)
WERE I A LITTLE BIRD
Were I a little bird,
And had two little wings,
I'd fly to thee;
But I must stay, because
That cannot be.
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