"Die Liebe" (Love) is a poem by Goethe from his historical tragedy Egmont. In the play it is given to Klarchen, Egmont's lover, and it embodies in its ten very brief lines the confused feelings of love: "Joyful, and Sorrowful, Thoughtful; Yearning and Grieving" are the first five lines of the poem, and "Happy alone is the soul that loves" is the closing couplet. The lyric has fascinated composers before and after Schubert: Beethoven set it as part of his incidental music for Egmont, and Liszt later set it three times. Schubert set Die Liebe (D. 210) on June 3, 1815, and, unlike Beethoven or Liszt, he did not resort to repeating any of the text to lengthen the song. Indeed, Schubert's setting is as brief as Goethe's poem, but it contains all the poem's ambivalence in its setting. "Joyful" is given two long notes over a rolling major arpeggio; "Sorrowful" is given the same two long notes over the same rolling arpeggio turned to minor; "Thoughtful" is stretched out over several notes ending with a turn; "Yearning and grieving" moves the singer's tessitura up and repeats the music's modulation from major to minor. The closing four lines of the song have a more heroic vocal line declaimed above fanfare-like figures, reminiscent of the rhythm of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the piano accompaniment, to bring Die Liebe to a rousing close—but with a tender piano postlude to recall the tenderness of love.

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