Part 42 (2/2)

The genuine poetic pantheism, which, for all his melancholy and sentimentality, was the spring of Werther's feeling, is seen in loftier and more comprehensive form in the first part of _Faust_, when Faust opens the book and sees the sign of macrocosmos:

How all things live and work, and ever blending, Weave one vast whole from Being's ample range!

How powers celestial, rising and descending, Their golden buckets ceaseless interchange.

Their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, From heaven to earth their genial influence bringing, Through the wide whole their chimes melodious ringing.

And the Earth spirit says:

In the currents of life, in action's storm, I float and I wave With billowy motion,-- Birth and the grave A limitless ocean.

Not only of knowledge of, but of feeling for, Nature, it is said:

Inscrutable in broadest light, To be unveiled by force she doth refuse.

But Faust is in deep sympathy with her; witness:

Thou full-orbed moon! Would thou wert gazing now For the last time upon my troubled brow!

and

Loos'd from their icy fetters, streams and rills In spring's effusive, quick'ning mildness flow, Hope's budding promise every valley fills.

And winter, spent with age, and powerless now, Draws off his forces to the savage hills.

and the idyllic evening mood, which gives way to a burst of longing:

In the rich sunset see how brightly glow Yon cottage homes girt round with verdant green.

Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more; Yonder he hastens to diffuse new light.

Oh! for a pinion from the earth to soar, And after, ever after him to strive!

Then should I see the world outspread below, Illumined by the deathless evening beams, The vales reposing, every height aglow, The silver brooklets meeting golden streams....

Alas! that when on Spirit wing we rise, No wing material lifts our mortal clay.

But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, To rush aloft, to struggle still towards heaven, When far above us pours its thrilling song The skylark lost amid the purple even, When on extended pinion sweeps amain The lordly eagle o'er the pine-crowned height.

And when, still striving towards its home, the crane O'er moor and ocean wings its onward flight.

But the most complete expression of Goethe's att.i.tude, not only in the period of _Werther_ and the first part of _Faust_, but generally, is contained in the _Monologue_, which was probably written not earlier than the spring of 1788:

Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all For which I prayed. Not vainly hast thou turn'd To me thy countenance in flaming fire; Thou gav'st me glorious Nature for my realm, And also power to feel her and enjoy; Not merely with a cold and wond'ring glance, Thou didst permit me in her depths profound, As in the bosom of a friend, to gaze; Before me thou dost lead her living tribes, And dost in silent grove, in air and stream, Teach me to know my kindred....

His feeling was not admiration alone, nor reverence alone, but the sympathy of _Childe Harold_:

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies a part Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of these deep in my heart With a pure pa.s.sion? Should I not contemn All objects, if compared with these?

and the very confession of faith of such poetic pantheism is in Faust's words:

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