Note 1044 — Chapter VII · THE EARLIEST DIFFERENTIATIONS OF POETRY

When the Greek youth leaves his home, Fauriel says, his family sing songs of farewell, traditional and improvised, to which he often improvises a reply. Improvisation, too, and presumably once in the village throng, lies at the foundation of the German prentice songs of leave-taking, the eternal note of scheiden, das thut grämen, with culmination in that exquisite poem, probably not improvised, Innsprück, ich muss dich lassen. The ennobling process is interesting, and is of a piece with the process assumed by A. W. Schlegel for the ennobling of Greek epic out of rude improvisation.