light" is probably nothing more than a happy invention.

Admirers of the great German see more in him than the author of the
various works which have been all too briefly characterized in the
preceding sketch. His is a case where, in very truth, the whole is
more than the sum of the parts. Goethe is the representative of an
epoch. He stands for certain ideals which are not those of the present
hour, but which it was of inestimable value to the modern man to have
thus nobly worked out and exemplified in practice. Behind and beneath
his writings, informing them and giving them their value for
posterity, is a wonderful personality which it is a delight and an
education to study in the whole process of its evolution. By way of
struggle, pain and error, like his own Faust, he arrived at a view of
life, in which he found inspiration and inner peace. It is outlined in
the verses which he placed before his short poems as a sort of motto:

Wide horizon, eager life,
Busy years of honest strife,
Ever seeking, ever founding,
Never ending, ever rounding,
Guarding tenderly the old,
Taking of the new glad hold,
Pure in purpose, light of heart,
Thus we gain--at least a start.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GOETHE Fritz Fleischer]



POEMS