A work by Goethe and one of his earliest, the production of which constituted a new era in the life of the poet, and marks a new era in the literature of Europe, "as giving expression to a class of feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our older poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they are feelings that arise from Passion incapable of being converted into Action, and belong to an ignorant, uncultivated, and unbelieving age such as ours," feelings that Byronically, "in dark wayward" mood reflect a mere sense of the miseries of human life.