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The Sorrows of Werter

By Johann Wolfgang Goethe


LETTER LXXIV.

December 6.

HOW her image haunts me! Awake or asleep she is ever present to my soul! -- Soon as I close my eyes, here in this brain, where all my nerves are concentered, her dark eyes are imprinted. Here -- I don't know how to describe it: -- but if I shut my eyes, hers are immediately before me like a sea, like a precipice, and they occupy all the fibres of my head. -- What is man! that boasted demigod! his strength fails him when most he {175} wants it; -- and whether he swims in pleasure, or bends under a load of sorrow, he is forced to stop; and whilst he is grasping at infinity, finds he must return again to his first cold existence.