From Norderney Heine moved to Hamburg, avowedly to practise, though it does not appear that he took his profession with much seriousness. At any rate, until 1831, when he migrated to Paris, his career is excessively erratic. At one moment he is paying a flying visit to England, "the land of roast beef and Yorkshire plum-pudding, where the machines behave like men and the men like machines"; at another he is on the staff of the _Allgemeinen Politischen Annalen_ and the _Morgenblatt_ of Munich; he is now in Hamburg, now in Frankfurt, and now in Italy, where his sojourn inspired the racy and brilliant _Italy_ and _Baths of Lucca_, both of which works obtained the gratuitous and well-merited state advertisement of prohibition, and achieved a most undeniable _succès de scandale_.
The departure to Paris marks an entirely new epoch in Heine's life, and offers a convenient stopping-place at which to give some account of his early poetry and prose, as exemplified in the _Book of Songs_, which was published in 1827, and the _Reisebilder_, the last part of which, the _Baths of Lucca_, was published in 1831.
Though neither the _Book of Songs_ nor the _Reisebilder_ is as great or as characteristic as the _Romanzero_ and _Poetische Nachlese_ on the one hand, or the _Salon_ on the other, they are yet by far the most popular of his works and contain some of his most delightful writing. One of the first traits that strikes us in the _Book of Songs_ is the Romantic tendency to bizarre and exotic themes. In the _Junge Leiden_ and _Lyrisches Intermezzo_ in particular we move in a ghostly atmosphere of apparitions, sea-maidens, skeletons, and midnight churchyards. Another interesting characteristic of these poems is his deep love of the East, a love which is to be probably ascribed more to the general eastward gravitation of the Romantic school than to the poet's Oriental blood. This tendency is responsible for two of the most charming poems in the book, the exquisite lyric starting:
"Auf Flügeln des Gesanges Herzliebchen trag ich dich fort Fort nach den Fluren des Ganges Dort weiss ich den schönsten Ort."
"Dort liegt ein rotblühender Garten Im stillen Mondenschein; Die Lotosblumen erwarten Ihr trautes Schwesterlein."