the poet, emboldened as his poems turned out well, cherished the view that the poetic things, the wonders and dreams, had, even on their own, their well-attested standing within Being, and that no more was necessary than that his art now also find the word for them to describe and present them. At first, and for long, it seemed as though a word were like a grasp that fastens upon the things already in being and held to be in being, compresses and expresses them, and thus makes them beautiful.
Wonder or dream from distant land
I carried to my country's strand
And waited till the twilit norn
Had found the name within her bourn—
Then I could grasp it close and strong
It blooms and shines now the front along ...
Wonders and dreams on the one hand, and on the other hand the names by which they are grasped, and the two fused—thus poetry came about. Did this poetry do justice to what is in the poet's nature—that he must found what is lasting, in order that it may endure and be?
But in the end the moment comes for Stefan George when the conventional self-assured poetic production suddenly breaks down and makes him think of Hölderlin's words:
But what endures is founded by poets.
For at one time, once, the poet-still filled with hope after a happy sail—reaches the place of the ancient goddess of fate and demands the name of the rich and frail prize that lies there plain in his hand. It is neither "wonder from afar" nor "dream." The goddess searches long, but in vain. She gives him the tidings:
"No like of this these depths enfold."
There is nothing in these depths that is like the prize so rich and frail which is plainly there in his hand. Such a word, which would let the prize lying there plainly be what it is—such a