HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

62 J^eme,
HEINE IN EXILE.
More than six moons have waned
since any German voice fell upon my
ear, and all my thoughts clothe themselves
laboriously in foreign phrase.
You may perhaps have some notion of
bodily exile, but of spiritual exile none
but a German poet is capable of forming
any conception—one, also, who is
forced to speak French all day, to write
it, and at night even to sigh in h'rench
in the arms of his beloved! My very
thoughts are exiled, exiled in a foreign
tongue.
LONDON.
Send, if you choose, a philosopher to
London, but on no account send a poet
thither ! Send a philosopher and place
him at a corner of Cheapside. He will
there learn more than out of all the books
of the last Leipzig Fair. As the human
waves roar about him, a sea of new
thoughts will rise within him. The infinite
spirit which broods over it will
breathe upon him, the most hidden secrets
of the social order will suddenly
reveal themselves to him, he will hear
with the ear and see with the eye, the
heartbeat of the world.