the sorrows of young werther

"when i go out through the town gate, the way i took the first time to fetch Lotte for the dance, how completely different it was! everything, everything, has passed on! no hint of the previous world, no pulse-beat of my former feelings. i feel as a ghost must feel returning to a destroyed, burnt-out castle he had once built as a radiant prince, furnished with all the gifts of glory that, dying, he had, full of hope, bequeathed to his beloved son."

- the sorrows of young werther by johann wolfgang von goethe