It was the most momentous hour of
his life, and, as he took his place in the carriage, he called aloud,
in mock heroics, to the excited Fraeulein words which he may have
recently written in _Egmont_, and which had even more significance as
bearing on his own future than he could have dreamed at the moment:
"Child! Child! Forbear! As if goaded by invisible spirits, the
sun-steeds of time bear onward the light car of our destiny; and
nothing remains for us but, with calm self-possession, firmly to grasp
the reins, and now right, now left, to steer the wheels here from the
precipice and there from the rock. Whither he is hasting, who knows?
Does anyone consider whence he came?"[239]
[Footnote 239: Miss Swanwick's translation. Goethe concludes his
Autobiography with these words.]
With him to Weimar Goethe bore two manuscripts to which, during his
last years in Frankfort, he had, at one time and another, committed
his deepest feelings as a man, his profoundest thoughts as a thinker,
and his finest imaginations as a poet. The one contained the first
draft of the drama which, as we have seen, was written in those days
of torturing suspense preceding his final departure from his paternal
home, and which, subsequently recast, was to take its place among the
best known of his works--the tragedy of _Egmont_.
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