sed!

I saw thee: in thine eye's soft gaze
A tender, calm delight I knew;
All motions of my heart were thine.
And thine was every breath I drew.
The freshest, richest hues of Spring
Enhaloed thy lovely face,--
And tenderest thoughts for me!--my hope!
But, undeserved, ye Powers of Grace!

But, ah! too soon, with morning's dawn,
The hour of parting cramps my heart;
Then, in thy kisses, O what bliss!
And in thine eye, what poignant smart!
I went; thou stood'st and downward gazed,
Gazed after me with tearful eyes;
Yet, to be loved, what blessedness,
And, oh! to love, ye Gods, what bliss!

CHAPTER V

FRANKFORT--_GOeTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_

AUGUST, 1771--DECEMBER, 1771

Goethe returned to Frankfort at the end of August, 1771, and, with the
exception of two memorable intervals, he remained there till November,
1775, when he left it, never again to make it his permanent home. This
period of four years and two months is in creative productiveness
unparalleled in his own career, and is probably without a parallel in
literary history. During these years he produced _Goetz von
Berlichingen_ and _Werther_, both of which works, whatever their
merits or demerits, are at least landmarks, not only in the history of
German, but of European literature. To the same period belong the
original scenes of _Faust_, in which he displayed a richness of
imagination with a spontaneity of passion, of thought and of feeling,
to which he never attained in the subsequent additions he made to the
poem. In these scenes are already clearly defined the two figures,
Faust and Mephistopheles, which have their place in the world's
gallery of imaginative creations beside Ulysses and Don Quixote,
Hamlet and Falstaff; and there, too, in all her essential lineaments,
we have Gretchen, the most moving of all the births of a poet's mind
and heart. And, besides these three works of universal interest, there
belong to the same period a series of productions--plays, lyrics,
essays--which, though at a lower level of inspiration, were sufficient
to mark their author as an original genius with a compass of thought
and imagination hitherto unexampled in the literature of his country.
Had Goethe died at the age of twenty-six, he would have left behind
him a legacy which would have assured him a place with the great
creative minds of all time.

This extraordin