His lady-love is ’brightly beautiful as morning clouds on yonder height.’

’I was wont to look at thee as one looks at the stars and moon, delighting in thee without the most distant wish in my quiet breast to possess thee.’

‘I give kisses as the spring gives flowers.’

’My feeling for thee was like seed, which germinates slowly in winter, but ripens quickly in summer.’

The stars move ‘with flower feet.’

The graces are ’pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of earth.’

A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark ground.

In Stella: 

    Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to
    return to thy breast from the sandy desert world.

    I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning.

In Faust: 

    The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human
    effort; its coloured reflection the image of life.

When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world perishing with him: 

    The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the
    future.

These are among his still more numerous metaphors: 

A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past.  Iphigenia says to Orestes: 

    O let the pure breath of love blow lightly on thy heart’s flame
    and cool it.

and Eleonora complains about Tasso: 

    Let him go!  But what twilight falls round me now!  Formerly the
    stream carried us along upon the light waves without a rudder.

In Goethe we see very clearly how the inner life, under the pressure of its own intensity, will, so to speak, overflow into the outer world, making that live in its turn; and how this is especially the case when the amorous passion is present to add its impetus to feeling, and attribute its own fervour to all around.

May Song, On the Lake, Ganymede, are instances of this.

Ganymede: 

      Oh, what a glow
      Around me in morning’s
      Blaze thou diffusest,
      Beautiful spring! 
  With the rapture of love but intenser,
  Intenser and deeper and sweeter,
  Nestles and creeps to my heart
      The sensation divine
      Of thy fervour eternal,
      Oh, thou unspeakably fair!

Beautiful personifications abound: 

The sun is proudly throned in heaven.

The glowing sun gazes at the rugged peak or charms it with fiery love,

Or bathes like the moon in the ocean.

The parting glance of Mother Sun broods on the grapes.

‘Morning came frightening away light sleep with its footsteps.’

‘The young day arose with delight.’