The connotations of mortality inherent in Schubert's appropriation of In's Stille Land for his final setting of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt may well be understood to enhance and reinforce Mignon's desire for death already expressed so poignantly in the previous three songs of Op. 62, most explicitly, of course, in So laβt mich scheinen. Whether this was ever Schubert's intent, and whether indeed his audience would have recognized an allusion to the earlier song and interpreted it as such cannot fully be known. However, the mere possibility of a deliberate allusion undoubtedly enriches the tragic perspective presented in the other songs of the cycle, a perspective that clearly contrasts enormously with his musical understanding of Mignon five years earlier.

Such a changed literary response may, of course, be largely attributable to important developments in Schubert's compositional style, yet the circumstances surrounding such a drastically altered poetic reading may shed light on some crucial ingredients of those very developments. April of 1821 (the date of the initial Mignon settings) was a promising time for Schubert, for he seemed finally to be on the threshold of fame as a composer. Early in that month, after an unusually large number of public or semi-public performances of his works, Erlkönig became the first of Schubert's songs to be published. At this time also, Schubert applied for a position at the court opera, a lucrative and well-recognized field of endeavour that certainly seemed to be beckoning promisingly.