Moreover, Heine's health was undermined. In the latter thirties he
suffered often from headaches and afflictions of the eyes; in the
middle of the forties paralysis of the spinal cord began to manifest
itself; and for the last ten years of his life he was a hopelessly
stricken invalid, finally doomed for five years to that "mattress
grave" which his fortitude no less than his woeful humor has
pathetically glorified. His wife cared for him dutifully, he was
visited by many distinguished men of letters, and in 1855 a
ministering angel came to him in the person of Elise von Krinitz
("Camille Selden") whom he called "_Die Mouche_" and for whom he wrote
his last poem, _The Passion Flower_, a kind of apology for his life.

Meantime contentions, tribulations, and a wasting frame seemed only to
sharpen the wits of the indomitable warrior. _New Songs_ (1844)
contains, along with negligible cynical pieces, a number of love songs
no whit inferior to those of the _Book of Songs_, romances, and
scorching political satires. The _Romanzero_ (1851) is not unfairly
represented by such a masterpiece as _The Battlefield of Hastings_.
And from this last period we have two quasi-epic poems: _Atta Troll_
(1847; written in 1842) and _Germany_ (1844), the fruit of the first
of Heine's two trips across the Rhine.

Historically and poetically, _Atta Troll_ is one of the most
remarkable of Heine's works. He calls it _Das letzte freie Waldlied
der Romantik_ ("The last free forest-song of romanticism.") Having for
its principal scene the most romantic spot in Europe, the valley of
Roncesvaux, and for its principal character a dancing bear, the
impersonation of those good characters and talentless men who, in the
early forties, endeavored to translate the prose of Young Germany into
poetry, the poem flies to the merriest, maddest height of romanticism