exercise
of this poetic faculty might indeed be excited and determined by
circumstances; but its most joyful and richest action was
spontaneous--even involuntary. In my nightly vigils the same thing
happened; so that I often wished, like one of my predecessors, to have
a leathern jerkin made, and to get accustomed to writing in the dark,
so as to be able to fix on paper all such unpremeditated effusions. It
had so often happened to me that, after composing some snatch of
poetry in my head, I could not recall it, that I would now hurry to my
desk and, without once breaking off, write off the poem from beginning
to end, not even taking time to straighten the paper, if it lay
crosswise, so that the verses often slanted across the page. In such a
mood I preferred to get hold of a lead pencil, because I could write
most readily with it; whereas the scratching and spluttering of a pen
would sometimes wake me from a poetic dream, confuse me, and so stifle
some trifling production in its birth."[45]

[Footnote 45: The translation of this passage is by Miss Minna Steele
Smith.--_Poetry and Truth from My Own Life_ (London, 1908.)]

Poetry produced as here described may certainly be regarded as part of
the poet's "confession," but in the circumstances of its origin it is
a world apart from the poetry composed in the fashion described in the
passage preceding. The poet here does not coolly say to himself: "Go
to, I will make a poem to relieve my feelings"; he sings, to quote
Goethe's own expression, "as the bird sings," out of the sheer
fulness of his heart, which insists on immediate expression.[46] True
it is that Goethe, like all other poets, frequently wrote under no
immediate pressure of inspiration, but to affirm this of the highest
efforts of his genius is at once to contradict his own testimony and
to misinterpret the conditions under which genius produces its
results.

[Footnote 46: In a letter to W. von Rumohr (September 28th, 1807),
Goethe calls "unaufhaltsame Natur, unueberwindliche Neigung, draengende
Leidenschaft" the "Haupterfordernisse der wahren Poesie." In two of
his _Zahme Xenien_ Goethe has expressed his opinion on the necessity
of inspiration in poetic production:--

Ja das ist das rechte Gleis,
Dass man nicht weiss,
Was man denkt,
Wenn man denkt:
Alles ist als wie geschenkt.

All unser redlichstes Bemuehn
Glueckt nur im unbewussten Momente.
Wie moechte denn di