n my soul.... The weather agrees exactly with my state of
mind, and I begin to believe that it is the weather around me
which has the most immediate effect upon me, and the great world
thrills my little one with her own mood.

Again, _To the Moon_, in the spring 1778, expresses perfect communion
between Nature and feeling:

Flooded are the brakes and dells
With thy phantom light,
And my soul receives the spell
Of thy mystic night.
To the meadow dost thou send
Something of thy grace,
Like the kind eye of a friend
Beaming on my face.
Echoes of departed times
Vibrate in mine ear,
Joyous, sad, like spirit chimes,
As I wander here.
Flow, flow on, thou little brook,
Ever onward go!
Trusted heart and tender look
Left me even so!
Richer treasure earth has none
Than I once possessed--
Ah! so rich, that when 'twas gone
Worthless was the rest.
Little brook! adown the vale
Rush and take my song:
Give it passion, give it wail,
As thou leap'st along!
Sound it in the winter night
When thy streams are full,
Murmur it when skies are bright
Mirror'd in the pool.
Happiest he of all created
Who the world can shun,
Not in hate, and yet unhated,
Sharing thought with none,
Save one faithful friend, revealing
To his kindly ear
Thoughts like these, which o'er me stealing,
Make the night so drear.

In January 1778, he wrote to Frau von Stein about the fate of the
unhappy Chr. von Lassberg, who had drowned himself in the Ilm:

This inviting grief has something dangerously attractive about
it, like the water itself; and the reflections of the stars,
which gleam from above and below at once, are alluring.

To the same year belongs _The Fisher_, which gave such melodious
voice to the magic effect of a shimmering expanse of water, 'the
moist yet radiant blue,' upon the mood; just as, later on, _The
Erlking_, with the grey of an autumn evening woven ghostlike round
tree and shrub, made the mind thrill with foreboding.

Goethe was always an industrious traveller. In his seventieth year he
went to Frankfort, Strassburg, the Rhine, Thuringia, and the Harz
Mountains (Harzreise, 1777): 'We went up to the peaks, and down to
the depths of the earth, and hammered at all the rocks.' His love for
Nature increased with his science; but, at the same time, poetic
expression of it took a more objective form; the passionate
vehemence, the really