Du geleitest mich durch’s Leben
    Sinnende Melancholie! 
    Mag mein Stern sich strebend heben,
    Mag er sinken,—­weichest nie![106]

The definite purpose with which the poet seeks out and strives to keep intact his painful impressions is frankly stated in one of his diary memoranda, as follows:  “So gibt es eine Hoehe des Kummers, auf welcher angelangt wir einer einzelnen Empfindung nicht nachspringen, sondern sie laufen lassen, weil wir den Blick fuer das schmerzliche Ganze nicht verlieren, sondern eine gewisse kummervolle Sammlung behalten wollen, die bei aller scheinbaren Aussenheiterkeit recht gut fortbestehen kann."[107] Hoelderlin, as we have noted,[108] not infrequently pictures himself as a sacrifice to the cause of liberty and fatherland, to the new era that is to come: 

    Umsonst zu sterben, lieb’ ich nicht; doch
    Lieb’ ich zu fallen am Opferhuegel
    Fuer’s Vaterland, zu bluten des Herzens Blut,
    Fuer’s Vaterland....[109]

Lenau, on the other hand, is anxious to sacrifice himself to his muse.  “Kuenstlerische Ausbildung ist mein hoechster Lebenszweck; alle Kraefte meines Geistes, meines Gemuetes betracht’ ich als Mittel dazu.  Erinnerst Du Dich des Gedichtes von Chamisso,[110] wo der Maler einen Juengling ans Kreuz nagelt, um ein Bild vom Todesschmerze zu haben?  Ich will mich selber ans Kreuz schlagen, wenn’s nur ein gutes Gedicht gibt."[111] And again:  “Vielleicht ist die Eigenschaft meiner Poesie, dass sie ein Selbstopfer ist, das Beste daran."[112] The specific instances just cited, together with the inevitable impressions gathered from the reading of his lyrics, make it impossible to avoid the conclusion that we are dealing here with a virtuoso of Weltschmerz; that Lenau was not only conscious at all times of the depth of his sorrow, but that he was also fully aware of its picturesqueness and its poetic possibilities.  It is true that this self-consciousness brings him dangerously near the bounds of insincerity, but it must also be granted that he never oversteps those bounds.

Regarded as a psychological process, Lenau’s Weltschmerz therefore stands midway between that of Hoelderlin and Heine.  It is more self-centred than Hoelderlin’s and while the poet is able to diagnose the disease which holds him firmly in its grasp, he lacks those means by which he might free himself from it.  Heine goes still further, for having become conscious of his melancholy, he mercilessly applies the lash of self-irony, and in it finds the antidote for his Weltschmerz.

Fichte, says Erich Schmidt, calls egoism the spirit of the eighteenth century, by which he means the revelling, the complete absorption, in the personal.  This will naturally find its favorite occupation in sentimental self-contemplation, which becomes a sort of fashionable epidemic.  It is this fashion which Goethe wished to depict in “Werther,” and therefore Werther’s hopeless love is not wholly responsible