When Laura plays the piano, her adorer stands there, one moment an exanimate statue, the next a disembodied spirit,--while the listening zephyrs murmur more softly in reverence. In a 'Reproach to Laura' she is taxed with being the ruin of her lover's ambition. Because of her the 'giant has shriveled to a dwarf'. She has 'blown away the mountains', that he had 'rolled up' to the sunny heights of glory. In another poem, 'Mystery of Reminiscence', we hear of a cosmic golden age in which Laura, one with her poet, was a part of the Godhead. One and yet two, they swept through space in unimaginable ecstasy. Somehow,--the point is not made very clear,--there came a great cataclysm and separated them. Now they are beautiful fragments of the God, evermore yearning to restore the lost unity: Darum Laura dieses Wutverlangen, Ewig starr an deinen Mund zu hangen, Und die Wollust deinen Hauch zu trinken, In dein Wesen, wenn sich Blicke winken, Sterbend zu versinken.[39] Without lingering longer over the erotic poems of the 'Anthology', one may say that they are characterized, like 'The Robbers', by a fiery intensity of expression which, in the search after the sublime, occasionally passes the bounds of good taste. Their author already has at his command a gorgeous poetic diction that is all his own. One is often amazed at his mere command of words, the audacity of his tropes, the sweep of his imagination. But he does not convince. When at his best he only produces an impression of magnificent feigning. The reader soon sees that, notwithstanding all the impassioned hyperboles, it is really intellectual poetry,--a youth philosophizing about his passion. And the philosophy is little more than a matter of fine-sounding but vacuous analogies that have no root in the facts of experience.[40] And so the poetry does not take hold of one. Nor does it charm with its music; there is vigor and sweep and swing, but the subtler elements of melodious verse are lacking.