"The Perfidy of the Affianced Bride," which is not rhymed in the original, runs as follows: Hot in heaven the summer sun doth shine, But me, young though I be, it warmeth not! My heart is dead with cold Through the perfidy of my affianced bride.
Woe-sadness upon me hath fallen, Upon my sorrowful head; My soul by deadly anguish is tormented, And from my body my soul doth long to flee.
Unto men have I resorted for help-- With a laugh have they turned away; To the grave of my father, my mother-- But they rise not at my call.
The world grew dark before mine eyes, Upon the grass I swooned.
At dead of night, in a dreadful storm, They lifted me from the grave.
At night, in the storm, I saddled my steed; I set out, caring not whither I went-- To lead a wretched life, to console myself, With rancor to demand satisfaction from men.
Romanticism established, as its first principles, freedom of creation and nationality of poetry, and these principles survived romanticism itself.

Now, while romanticism preached freedom of creation, it circumscribed this freedom by selecting as subjects for poetical compositions chiefly the extraordinary sides of life, its majestic moments.

Its heroes were always choice, powerful natures, who suffered profoundly because of the lot of all mankind, and were capable of gigantic conflicts against the whole world.

Classicism had bequeathed this habit of regarding as worthy of poetical treatment only heroes who stood out from the mass, and of depicting these heroes only at critical crises.

All this depended, in a great degree, upon the political and social conditions which prevailed at that epoch--the beginning of the nineteenth century.