,' which I
have just composed, as a memorial of the time when I first became
acquainted with you."

This song will now be sung for you. The words are from the German of
Goethe.

("Knowest thou the land where the sweet citron blows.")

Beethoven's interviews with Bettine were not all wasted in rhapsodies of
love. In one of his conversations with this accomplished lady he thus
eloquently describes the power of poetry and the philosophy of music:--

"Goethe's poems exercise a great sway over me, not only by their
meaning but by their rhythm also. It is a language that urges me on
to composition, that builds up its own lofty standard, containing
in itself all the mysteries of harmony, so that I have but to
follow up the radiations of that centre from which melodies evolve
spontaneously. I pursue them eagerly, overtake them, then again see
them flying before me, vanish in the multitude of my impressions,
until I seize them anew with increased vigour no more to be parted
from them. It is then that my transports give them every diversity
of modulation: it is I who triumph over the first of these musical
thoughts, and the shape I give it I call symphony. Yes, Bettina,
_music is the link between intellectual and sensual life_.

"Melody gives a sensible existence to poetry; for does not the
meaning of a poem become embodied in melody? The mind would embrace
all thoughts, both high and low, and embody them into one stream of
sensations, all sprung from simple melody, and without the aid of
its charms doomed to die in oblivion. This is the unity which lives
in my symphonies--numberless streamlets meandering on, in endless
variety of shape, but all diverging into one common bed. Thus it is
I feel that there is an indefinite something, an eternal, an
infinite to be attained; and although I look upon my works with a
foretaste of success, yet I cannot help wishing, like a child, to
begin my task anew, at the very moment that my thundering appeal to
my hearers seems to have forced my musical creed upon them, and
thus to have exhausted the insatiable cravings of my soul after my
'beau ideal.'

"Music alone ushers man into the portal of an intellectual world,
ready to encompass _him_, but which _he_ may never encompass. That
mind alone whose every thought is rhythm can embody music, ca