"[234]
[Footnote 232: The two poems, _Lilis Park_ and the song beginning "Ihr
verbluehet, suesse Rosen," which Goethe refers to this period, were
really written at an earlier date. The latter, we have seen, appears
in _Erwin und Elmire_.]
[Footnote 233: It was at this time that he translated the Song of
Solomon, which he calls "the most glorious collection of love-songs
God ever made."]
[Footnote 234: _Werke, Briefe_, ii. 294. In a letter to the Countess's
brothers about the same date, Goethe writes: "Gustchen [the Countess]
is an angel. The devil that she is an Imperial Countess."--_Ib._ p.
298.]
In all this tumultuous effusion we see the side of Goethe's nature
which he has depicted in Werther, in Clavigo, and Fernando. Yet all
the while he was completely master of his own genius. Throughout all
his alternating raptures and despairs he was assiduously practising
the arts to which his genius called him. He diligently contributed
both text and drawings to Lavater's _Physiognomy_; he worked at art on
his own account, making a special study of Rembrandt; and, as we shall
see, even at the time when his relations to Lili were at the
breaking-point he was producing poetical work which he never surpassed
at any period of his life.
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