The graces are 'pure as the heart of the waters, as the marrow of earth.'
A delicate poem is a rainbow only existing against a dark ground.
In Stella:
Thou dost not feel what heavenly dew to the thirsty it is, to return to thy breast from the sandy desert world.
I felt free in soul, free as a spring morning.
In Faust:
The cataract bursting through the rocks is the image of human effort; its coloured reflection the image of life.
When Werther feels himself trembling between existence and non-existence, everything around him sinking away, and the world perishing with him:
The past flashes like lightning over the dark abyss of the future.
These are among his still more numerous metaphors:
A sea of folly, an ocean of fragrance, the waves of battle, the stream of genius, the tiger claw of despair, the sun-ray of the past. Iphigenia says to Orestes: