Dear friend amid the barbed wire and the fear
Of an OFLAG, I seek your thoughts with mine:
What are you doing now? How you must pine
For your sweet land of France out in the drear
Prison-shack guarded by the uniforms
In human form, who breathe race-pride like fire
And whose Romanticism of blood aspires
To glories of the age of helmet horns.
It is so foreign to the other German
Romantics that you loved and understand....
Friend, be sustained in hope for a determined
Escape one spell-cast day across the Rhine,
Returning home from the Romantic Land
That earned the loving hatred of your Heine.