"He
is changed; his nature is transformed; his understanding has suffered.
Better it is that I should restore him to his kinsfolk, than that I
should draw the responsibility of evil consequences upon myself." But,
as in the case of _Prometheus_, it is in the lyric that was to form
part of the drama that we have the most arresting expression of the
poet's genius--another proof of the fact that at this period it was in
the lyric that Goethe found the most adequate utterance for what was
deepest in his nature. In a rush of unrhymed, irregular measures it
describes the course of a river (the Rhine was in the poet's mind)
from its source on the mountain summit, its impetuous progress among
the obstacles that bar its passage, its gradually broadening current
as it sweeps through the plains, undelayed by shady valley or by the
flowers that adorn its banks; and finally losing itself in the ocean
with all its tributary streams.
[Footnote 148: It is one of the ironies of Goethe's literary career
that, in his later years, in the period of his reaction against the
formlessness that had invaded German literature, he, with the approval
of Schiller, translated Voltaire's _Mahomet_, and staged it in
Weimar.
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