Of far higher poetic value is the second poem, _Der Wanderer_,[114] in which Matthew Arnold found "the power of Greek radiance" which Goethe could give to his handling of nature. The scene of the poem is in southern Italy, near Cumae. The Wanderer, wearied by his travel under the noonday sun, comes upon a woman by the wayside whom he asks where he may quench his thirst. She conducts him through the neighbouring thicket, when an architrave, half-buried in the moss, and bearing an effaced inscription, catches his eye. They reach the woman's hut, which he finds to have been constructed from the stones of a ruined temple. Asleep in the hut is the woman's infant son, whom she leaves in the arms of the Wanderer, while she goes to fetch water from the spring. She presses on him a piece of bread, the only food she has to offer, and invites him to remain till the return of her husband to the evening meal. He refuses her hospitality, and resumes his journey to Cumae, his destination. Such is the outline of the poem, which is in the form of a dialogue, in the irregular measure common to the odes above mentioned. But in the _Wanderer_ there is nothing dithyrambic; rather its characteristic is a reflective repose, which is in strange contrast to the tumultuous outpouring of the _Wanderers Sturmlied_, and which might induce us to assign its production to a later day in Goethe's life, to the period of his sojourn in Italy, when years had somewhat chastened him, and when he was under the spell of the artistic remains of classical antiquity. Of the finest inspiration is the contrast between the remarks of the peasant woman wholly engrossed in the immediate needs of the day, and the speculations of the Wanderer as he comes upon the ruins that time has wrought upon the choicest works of man's hand. Here we are far from all vapid and artificial sentiment; we have philosophical meditation proceeding from the profoundest source of the pathos of human life, the transitoriness of man and his works. Completely in accord with the philosophy of his ripest years, however, the poet finds no ground for melancholy regrets in the spectacle of nature triumphing over man's handiwork. Even in her work of corrosion she provides for the welfare of her children; in a home reared out of a ruined temple happy human lives are spent. And it is in the spirit of the broadest humanity--a spirit that marks him off from the sentimentalists of the Darmstadt circle--that he regards the "ruins of time." [Footnote 114: On account of his constant travels between Frankfort and Darmstadt, Goethe was known among his friends as the _Wanderer_. The poem was written in the autumn, during Goethe's residence in Wetzlar.] Natur! du ewig keimende, Schaffst jeden zum Genuss des Lebens, Hast deine Kinder alle muetterlich Mit Erbteil ausgestattet, einer Huette.