Schumann first read these poems in late May, 1851, and over the next two weeks wrote these lieder and four vocal duets to the texts. The poet, Elisabeth Kuhlman, was a child prodigy, fluent in eleven languages, and an immensely prolific author, though these verses were taken from her private writings, not those intended for publication. Schumann was overwhelmed by her poetry and by her early death, at the age of seventeen, and considered her to be a "miraculous" creature. (He had finished his Mignon the year before, and was apparently strongly drawn during this time to stories of other-worldly young girls and their untimely deaths.)

Of the first four songs, the moods alternate between pensive and cheerful, with hints of impending tragedy in the first, with its references to illness and sorrow. This is relieved by the exuberance of the second, with its slightly obvious but still appealing repeated theme in the piano suggesting the flight of the birds. The third opens soberly, but rises to lyricism as the child assured the listener that she is not poor at all, and is followed by the jolly if slightly clumsy "The canary." The child-like tone is immediately dropped with "reich mir," with its dramatic exclamations and discords. There are hints of a funeral march, and even some suggestion of Death's lines in Schubert's Death and the Maiden in the penultimate song, and the last one returns to the theme of illness and the love between a mother and daughter, but with an agitated tone and only a superficial calm at the thought of being reunited after death. While these songs are not Schumann's best either technically or in expressiveness, they are still effective and moving.

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