Now we have him indulging in a vein of artificial sentiment, which, it might have been supposed, he had for ever left behind as the result of his schooling in Strassburg.
In two pieces belonging to the same period, however, is revealed in fullest measure the true self of the poet, with all the emotional and intellectual preoccupations which he had brought with him from Strassburg.

Of the one, _Wanderers Sturmlied_, he has given in his Autobiography an account which is fully borne out by the character of the poem itself.

It was composed, he tells us, in a terrific storm on one of his restless journeys between Frankfort and Darmstadt, and at a time when the memory of Friederike was still haunting him.

Of Friederike, however, there is no direct suggestion in the poem; from first to last it is a paean of the _Sturm und Drang_, composed in a form directly imitated from Pindar, whom he had been ardently studying since his return to Frankfort.

The theme is the glorification of genius--genius in its upwelling and original force as manifest in Pindar, not as in poets like Anacreon and Theocritus.