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137
The Solitary Summer
·
Elizabeth Von Arnim
22
In
the
afternoon
I
potter
in
the
garden
with
Goethe.
He
did
not,
I
am
sure,
care
much
really
about
flowers
and
gardens,
yet
he
said
many
lovely
things
about
them
that
remain
in
one's
memory
just
as
persistently
as
though
they
had
been
inspired
expressions
of
actual
feelings;
and
the
intellect
must
indeed
have
been
gigantic
that
could
so
beautifully
pretend.
Ordinary
blunderers
have
to
feel
a
vast
amount
before
they
can
painfully
stammer
out
a
sentence
that
will
describe
it;
and
when
they
have
got
it
out,
how
it
seems
to
have
just
missed
the
core
of
the
sensation
that
gave
it
birth,
and
what
a
poor,
weak
child
it
is
of
what
was
perhaps
a
mighty
feeling!
I
read
Goethe
on
a
special
seat,
never
departed
from
when
he
accompanies
me,
a
seat
on
the
south
side
of
an
ice-house,
and
thus
sheltered
from
the
north
winds
sometimes
prevalent
in
May,
and
shaded
by
the
low-hanging
branches
of
a
great
beech-tree
from
more
than
flickering
sunshine.
Through
these
branches
I
can
see
a
group
of
giant
poppies
just
coming
into
flower,
flaming
out
beyond
the
trees
on
the
grass,
and
farther
down
a
huge
silver
birch,
its
first
spring
green
not
yet
deepened
out
of
delicacy,
and
looking
almost
golden
backed
by
a
solemn
cluster
of
firs.
Here
I
read
Goethe--
everything
I
have
of
his,
both
what
is
well
known
and
what
is
not;
here
I
shed
invariable
tears
over
Werther,
however
often
I
read
it;
here
I
wade
through
Wilhelm
Meister,
and
sit
in
amazement
before
the
complications
of
the
Wahlverwandschaften;
here
I
am
plunged
in
wonder
and
wretchedness
by
Faust;
and
here
I
sometimes
walk
up
and
down
in
the
shade
and
apostrophise
the
tall
firs
at
the
bottom
of
the
glade
in
the
opening
soliloquy
of
Iphigenia.
Every
now
and
then
I
leave
the
book
on
the
seat
and
go
and
have
a
refreshing
potter
among
my
flower
beds,
from
which
I
return
greatly
benefited,
and
with
a
more
just
conception
of
what,
in
this
world,
is
worth
bothering
about,
and
what
is
not.
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