we were soaked
to the skin. We took refuge under a tree, and Goethe sang a little
song, 'Under the Greenwood Tree,' which you translated from
Shakespeare. Our common plight made us very confidential. He read
aloud to us some of the best scenes from his _Gottfried von
Berlichingen_.... Goethe is choke-full of songs. One about a hut built
out of the ruins of a temple is excellent.[111] ... The poor fellow
told my sister and myself a day ago that he had already been once in
love, but that the girl had played with him for a whole year and then
deserted him.[112] He believed, however, that she really loved him,
but another had appeared on the scene, and he was made a goose of."

[Footnote 110: A six hours' walk.]

[Footnote 111: The poem, entitled _Der Wanderer_, noted below.]

[Footnote 112: The girl meant was no doubt Kaethchen Schoenkopf.]

Under the inspiration of these caressing attentions Goethe's muse
could not be silent, and in the course of the spring and autumn he
threw off a succession of pieces which are the classical expression of
the sentimentalism of the period. To the three ladies-in-chief, under
the pseudonyms of Urania, Lila, and Psyche (Caroline Flachsland), he
successively addressed odes in which he gave them back their own
emotions with interest. Their inspiration is sufficiently suggested by
these lines which conclude the lines entitled _Elysium, an Uranien_:--

Seligkeit! Seligkeit!
Eines Kusses Gefuehl.

In all the three poems we have another illustration of Goethe's
susceptibility to immediate influences. Under the inspiration of
Friederike's simplicity he had written lyrics which were as pure in
form as direct in feeling. Now we have him indulging in a vein of
artificial sentiment, which, it might have been supposed, he had for
ever left behind as the result of his schooling in Strassburg.

In two pieces belonging to the same period, however, is revealed in
fullest measure the true self of the poet, with all the emotional and
intellectual preoccupations which he had brought with him from
Strassburg. Of the one, _Wanderers Sturmlied_, he has given in his
Autobiography an account which is fully borne out by the character of
the poem itself. It was composed, he tells us, in a terrific storm on
one of his restless journeys between Frankfort and Darmstadt, and at a
time when the memory of Friederike was still haunting him. Of
Friederike, however, there is no direct suggestion in the poe