m; from
first to last it is a paean of the _Sturm und Drang_, composed in a
form directly imitated from Pindar, whom he had been ardently studying
since his return to Frankfort. The theme is the glorification of
genius--genius in its upwelling and original force as manifest in
Pindar, not as in poets like Anacreon and Theocritus. He who is in
possession of this genius is armed against all the powers of nature
and fate, and his end can only be crowned with victory. Goethe himself
calls the poem a _Halbunsinn_, and one of his most sympathetic
critics--Viktor Hehn--admits that to follow its drift requires some
labour and some creative phantasy on the part of the reader.[113] But
it is not its poetical merit that gives the poem its chief interest;
it is to be taken, as it was meant, as a profession of the poet's
literary faith at the period when it was written, and as such it is a
historic document of the _Sturm und Drang_--at once an illustration
and an exposition of its motives and ideals. "All this," is Goethe's
mature comment on this and other productions of the same period, "was
deeply and genuinely felt, but often expressed in a one-sided and
unbalanced way."

[Footnote 113: _Ueber Goethe's Gedichte_ (1911), p. 157.]

Of far higher poetic value is the second poem, _Der Wanderer_,[114] in
which Matthew Arnold found "the power of Greek radiance" which Goethe
could give to his handling of nature. The scene of the poem is in
southern Italy, near Cumae. The Wanderer, wearied by his travel under
the noonday sun, comes upon a woman by the wayside whom he asks where
he may quench his thirst. She conducts him through the neighbouring
thicket, when an architrave, half-buried in the moss, and bearing an
effaced inscription, catches his eye. They reach the woman's hut,
which he finds to have been constructed from the stones of a ruined
temple. Asleep in the hut is the woman's infant son, whom she leaves
in the arms of the Wanderer, while she goes to fetch water from the
spring. She presses on him a piece of bread, the only food she has to
offer, and invites him to remain till the return of her husband to the
evening meal. He refuses her hospitality, and resumes his journey to
Cumae, his destination. Such is the outline of the poem, which is in
the form of a dialogue, in the irregular measure common to the odes
above mentioned. But in the _Wanderer_ there is nothing dithyrambic;
rather its characteristic is a reflective repose,