Amiel's Journal

The last stanza is especially poor, and in none of them is there much poetical promise. But the pathetic image of a forlorn and orphaned childhood, "un nid que la foudre a brisé," which it calls up, and the tone of brotherly affection, linger in one's memory. And through much of the volume of 1863, in the verses to "My Godson," or in the charming poem to Loulou, the little girl who at five years old, daisy in hand, had sworn him eternal friendship over Gretchen's game of "Er liebt mich--liebt mich nicht," one hears the same tender note.