Goethe's Correspondence with Child (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841. Excerpt: ... And lo he comes --give way --prodigious stillness in wide Nature --no breeze moving, no thought moving, --without reluctance, at his feet the mind fettered to him --can I love him, so high aloft, above myself? O world, but thou art narrow --the mind does not its pinions once stretch out, without to strain them far beyond thy reach. The wood, the verdant plain I must desert, the play-ground of his poetical delight; I fancy me touching his mantle's skirt, and my hands to stretch forth to him, who in earlier days, to me counted golden moments; when I sat at his feet and kissed his hand, and caressed him with speeches; and his mind was so nigh to mine, that ay he said to all, and drew my curls through his fingers and played with my ear; and raised my head, to regard the moon and stars; and should relate fine things of the moon, how she ascends the heights to crown the tops with lily-chaplets, and pour silver-streams in tenebrose wildernesses, filling their ravines with splendor, when stillness watches over the wafting vapors around. "Thou whimsey moon," said I, "givest whims that, like yon catching clouds, impetuously roll on after each other, to veil my hap; and as thy vapor-dividing light victoriously breaks forth to defy the nubiferous gale, thus darts on me the glance of him whose knees I here embrace.--So moon, thou art the secret divine; and like thee, moon, he is the secret divine; who like thee, onesided moon, pours down his light over the want of love." And now, in the dazzling glimmer of my tears, I see him, cloud-compelling, walk a silver-lining path, casting a claim at me to follow --I lack --hard before, he stepped this cloudy style; his breath agrees still with the air; I might drink it, I dare not; I am not strong to bear the violence impassion...