Accordingly his versification is highly harmonious, so that he
may be called the Swan of Eisleben. Not that he is by any means
gentle or swan-like in the songs which he composed for the purpose
of exciting the courage of the people. In these he is fervent, fierce.
The hymn which he composed on his way to Worms, and which he
and his companion chanted as they entered that city, 2 is a regular
war-song. The old cathedral trembled when it heard these novel
sounds. The very rooks flew from their nests in the towers. That
hymn, the Marseillaise of the Reformation, has preserved to this
day its potent spell over German hearts."

The words of Thomas Carlyle are not less emphatic, while
they penetrate deeper into the secret of the power of Luther's
hymns:

"The great Reformer's love of music and poetry, it has
often been remarked, is one of the most significant features
in his character. But indeed if every great man is
intrinsically a poet, an idealist, with more or less
completeness of utterance, which of all our great men, in
these modern ages, had such an endowment in that kind as
Luther? He it was, emphatically, who stood based on the
spiritual world of man, and only by the footing and power he
had obtained there, could work such changes on the material
world. As a participant and dispenser of divine influence, he
shows himself among human affairs a true connecting medium and
visible messenger between heaven and earth, a man, therefore,
not only permitted to enter the sphere of poetry, but to dwell
in the purest centre thereof, perhaps the most inspired of all
teachers since the Apostles. Unhappily or happily, Luther's