I remember the effect these things had upon me twenty years ago.  The total impression remained with me, but the details faded, and I had a wonderful longing to repeat the whole experience and correct my impressions.  I had become another man, and therefore it must needs appear different to me.

In later years he travelled a great deal in the Harz Mountains, to Carlsbad, Toplitz, the Maine, Marienbad, etc.  After the death of his great friends, Schiller and Carl August, he was more and more lonely, and his whole outlook, with increasing years, grew more impersonal, his attitude to Nature more abstract and scientific; the archetypal plant was superseded by the theory of colours.  But he kept fresh eyes for natural beauty into ripe age; witness this letter from Heidelberg, May 4th, 1808, to Frau von Stein: 

Yesterday evening, after finishing my work, I went alone to the castle, and first scrambled about among the ruins, and then betook myself to the great balcony from which one can overlook the whole country.  It was one of the loveliest of May evenings and of sunsets.  No!  I have really never seen such a fine view!  Just imagine!  One looked into the beautiful though narrow Neckar valley, covered on both sides with woods and vineyards and fruit trees just coming into flower.  Further off the valley widened, and one saw the setting sun reflected in the Rhine as it flowed majestically through most beautiful country.  On its further side the horizon was bounded by the Vosges mountains, lit up by the sun as if by a fire.  The whole country was covered with fresh green, and close to me were the enormous ruins of the old castle, half in light and half in shade.  You can easily fancy how it fascinated me.  I stood lost in the view quite half an hour, till the rising moon woke me from my dreams.

Goethe’s true lyrical period was in the seventies, before his Italian journeys; during and after that time he wrote more dramatic and epic poetry, with ballads and the more narrative kind of epic.  In sending Der Juengling und der Muehlbach to Schiller from Switzerland in 1797, he wrote:  ’I have discovered splendid material for idylls and elegies, and whatever that sort of poetry is called.’

Nature lyrics were few during his Italian travels, as in the journey to Sicily, 1787; among them were Calm at Sea: 

  Silence deep rules o’er the waters,
  Calmly slumbering lies the main.

and Prosperous Voyage: 

  The mist is fast clearing,
  And radiant is heaven,
  Whilst AEolus loosens
  Our anguish-fraught bond.

The most perfect of all such short poems was the Evening Song, written one September night of 1783 on the Gickelhahn, near Ilmenau.  He was writing at the same time to Frau von Stein:  ’The sky is perfectly clear, and I am going out to enjoy the sunset.  The view is great and simple—­the sun down.’