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, empörtes Herz!

* * * * *

Einst in des Vaters Schoosse, des liebenden
Geliebten Vaters,--aber der Würger kam,
Wir weinten, flehten, doch der Würger
Schnellte den Pfeil, und es sank die Stütze.

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 thränenvolle Welt!
Dieser Schauplatz, kann er Freude geben
Wo sich Trauern nicht dazu gesellt?[17]

But a time of still greater unhappiness was in store for him when he
left his home at the age of fourteen to enter the convent school at
Denkendorf, where he began his preparation for a theological course. A
more direct antithesis to all that his body and soul yearned for and