If ever a boy needed a strong fatherly hand to guide him, to teach him self-reliance and practical sense, it was this dreamy, tender-spirited child.[15] The love and sympathy which his mother bestowed upon him was not calculated to fit him for the rugged experiences of life, and while probably natural and pardonable, it was nevertheless extremely unfortunate that the boy was unconsciously encouraged to be and to remain a “Muttersoehnchen.”  But even with his peculiar trend of disposition, the result might not have been an unhappy one, had the course of his life not brought him more than an ordinary share of misfortune.  This overtook him early in life, for when but two years of age his father died.  His widowed mother now lived for a few years in complete retirement with her two children—­the poet’s sister Henrietta having been born just a few weeks after his father’s demise.  But it was not long before death again entered the household and robbed it of Hoelderlin’s aunt, his deceased father’s sister, who was herself a widow and the faithful companion of the poet’s mother.  When the latter found herself again alone with her two little ones, whose care was weighing heavily upon her, she consented to become the wife of her late husband’s friend, Kammerrat Gock, and accompanied him to his home in the little town of Nuertingen on the Neckar.  But this re-established marital happiness was to be of brief duration, for in 1779 her second husband died, and the mother was now left with four little children to care and provide for.

The frequency with which death visited the family during his childhood and youth, familiarized him at an early age with scenes of sorrow and grief.  No doubt he was too young when his father died to comprehend the calamity that had come upon the household, but it was not many months before he knew the meaning of his mother’s tears, not only for his father, but also for his sister, who died in her infancy.  Referring to his father’s death, he writes in one of his early poems, “Einst und Jetzt":[16]

    Einst schlugst du mir so ruhig, empoertes Herz!

* * * * *

    Einst in des Vaters Schoosse, des liebenden
    Geliebten Vaters,—­aber der Wuerger kam,
    Wir weinten, flehten, doch der Wuerger
    Schnellte den Pfeil, und es sank die Stuetze.

At his tenderest and most impressionable age, the boy was thus made sadly aware of the fleetingness of human life and the pains of bereavement.  We cannot wonder then at finding these impressions reflected in his most juvenile poetic attempts.  His poem “Das menschliche Leben,” written at the age of fifteen, begins: 

    Menschen, Menschen! was ist euer Leben,
    Eure Welt, die thraenenvolle Welt! 
    Dieser Schauplatz, kann er Freude geben
    Wo sich Trauern nicht dazu gesellt?[17]