He who is in possession of this genius is armed against all the powers of nature and fate, and his end can only be crowned with victory.

Goethe himself calls the poem a _Halbunsinn_, and one of his most sympathetic critics--Viktor Hehn--admits that to follow its drift requires some labour and some creative phantasy on the part of the reader.[113] But it is not its poetical merit that gives the poem its chief interest; it is to be taken, as it was meant, as a profession of the poet's literary faith at the period when it was written, and as such it is a historic document of the _Sturm und Drang_--at once an illustration and an exposition of its motives and ideals.

"All this," is Goethe's mature comment on this and other productions of the same period, "was deeply and genuinely felt, but often expressed in a one-sided and unbalanced way." [Footnote 113: _Ueber Goethe's Gedichte_ (1911), p.

157.] Of far higher poetic value is the second poem, _Der Wanderer_,[114] in which Matthew Arnold found "the power of Greek radiance" which Goethe could give to his handling of nature.

The scene of the poem is in southern Italy, near Cumae.