Harzreise im Winter

Harzreise im Winter, a poem written by Goethe in December 1777, while on a visit to the Harz mountains. It reflects his own confident sense of mission, and portrays in its central section the dejection of the character who cannot accommodate himself to the world, which originated in Goethe's visit to a young man named Plessing, led to despair, it was alleged, by the reading of Werther (see Leiden des jungen Werthers, Die).

The central section of the poem forms the text of the Alto Rhapsody by Brahms.