CHAPTER X

THE SENSITIVENESS AND EXAGGERATION OF THE ELEGIAC IDYLLIC FEELING

This longing to return to the lost paradise of Nature gradually produced a state of melancholy hyper-sensitiveness, an epidemic of world pain, quite as unnatural as the Rococo.

The heart came into its rights again and laid claim to absolute dominion in its kingdom, and regret that it had lain so long deprived of its own, gave rise to a tearful pensiveness, which added zest to restitution. It was convalescence, but followed at once by another complaint. Feeling swung from one extreme to the other.

German feeling in the first half of the eighteenth century was chiefly influenced, on the one hand, by Richardson's novels, which left no room for Nature, and by the poetry of Young and Thomson; on the other, by the pastoral idylls interspersed with anacreontic love-passages, affected by the French. At first description and moralizing preponderated.

In 1729 Haller's _Alps_ appeared. It had the merit of drawing the eyes of Europe to Alpine beauty and the moral worth of the Swiss, but shewed little eye for romantic scenery. It is full of descriptive painting, but not of a kind that appeals: scene follows scene with considerable pathos, especially in dealing with the people; but landscape is looked at almost entirely from the moralizing or utilitarian standpoint.

'Here, where the majestic Mount Gothard elevates its summit above the clouds, and where the earth itself seems to approach the sun, Nature has assembled in one spot all the choicest treasure of the globe. The deserts of Libya, indeed, afford us greater novelties, and its sandy plains are more fertile in monsters: but thou, favoured region, art adorned with useful productions only, productions which can satisfy all the wants of man. Even those heaps of ice, those frowning rocks in appearance so sterile, contribute largely to the general good, for they supply inexhaustible fountains to fertilize the land. What a magnificent picture does Nature spread before the eye, when the sun, gilding the top of the Alps, scatters the sea of vapours which undulates below! Through the receding vale the theatre of a whole world rises to the view! Rocks, valleys, lakes, mountains, and forests fill the immeasurable space, and are lost in the wide horizon. We take in at a single glance the confines of divers states, nations of various characters, languages, and manners, till the eyes, overcome by such extent of vision, drop their weary lids, and we ask of the enchanted fancy a continuance of the scene.

'When the first emotion of astonishment has subsided, how delightful is it to observe each several part which makes up this sublime whole! That mass of hills, which presents its graceful declivity covered with flocks of sheep whose bleatings resound through the meadows; that large clear lake, which reflects from its level surface sunbeams gently curved; those valleys, rich in verdure, which compose by their various outlines points of perspective which contract in the distance of the landscape! Here rises a bare steep mountain laden with the accumulated snow of ages; its icy head rests among the clouds, repelling the genial rays of the moon and the fervid heat of the dog-star: there a chain of cultivated hills spreads before the delighted eye; their green pastures are enlivened by flocks, and their golden corn waves in the wind: yet climates so different as those are only separated by a cool, narrow valley. Behold that foaming torrent rushing from a perpendicular height! Its rapid waves dash among the rocks, and shoot even beyond their limits. Divided by the rapidity of its course and the depth of the abyss where it falls, it changes into a grey moving veil; and, at length scattered into humid atoms, it shines with the tints of the rainbow, and, suspended over the valley, refreshes it with plenteous dew. The traveller beholds with astonishment rivers flowing towards the sky, and issuing from one cloud, hide themselves in the grey veil of another.

'Those desert places uncheered by the rays of the sun, those frozen abysses deprived of all verdure, hide beneath their sterile sands invaluable treasures, which defy the rigour of the seasons and all the injuries of time! 'Tis in dark and marshy recesses, upon the damp grottos, that crystal rocks are formed. Thus splendour is diffused through their melancholy vaults, and their shadowy depths gutter with the colours of the rainbow. O Nature, how various are thy operations, how infinite thy fertility!'

We cannot agree with Frey[1] that 'these few strophes may serve as sufficient proof that Haller's poetry is still, even among the mass of Alpine poetry, unsurpassed for intense power of direct vision, and easily makes one forget its partial lack of flexibility of diction.'

The truth is, flexibility is entirely lacking; but the lines do express the taste for open-air life among the great sublimities and with simple people. The poem is not romantic but idyllic, with a touch of the elegiac. It is the same with the poem _On the Origin of Evil_ (Book I.):

On those still heights whence constant springs flow down, I paused within a copse, lured by the evening breeze; Wide country lay spread out beneath my feet, Bounded by its own size alone.... Green woods covered the hills, through which the pale tints of the fields Shone pleasantly. Abundance and repose held sway far as the eye could reach.... And yonder wood, what left it to desire With the red tints upon the half-bare beeches And the rich pine's green shade o'er whitened moss? While many a sun-ray through the interstices A quivering light upon the darkness shed, Blending in varying hues green night with golden day How pleasant is the quiet of the copse! ... Yea, all I see is given by Providence, The world itself is for its burgher's joy; Nature's inspired with the general weal, The highest goodness shews its trace in all.

Friedrich von Hagedorn, too, praises country pleasures in _The Feeling of Spring_:

Enamelled meadows! freshly decked in green, I sing your praises constantly; Nature and Spring have decked you out.... Delightful quiet, stimulant of joy, How enviable thou art!

This idyllic taste for country life was common at the time, especially among the so-called 'anacreontists.' Gleim, for instance, in his _Praise of Country Life_: 'Thank God that I have fled from the bustle of the world and am myself again under the open sky.'

And in _The Countryman_:

How happy is he who, free from cares, ploughs his father's fields; every morning the sun shines on the grass in which he lies.

And Joh. Friedrich von Cronegk:

Fly from sordid cares and the proud tumult of cities ... here in the peaceful valley shy wisdom sports at ease, where the smiling Muse crowns herself with dewy roses.

With this idyllic tone it is not surprising to find the religious feeling of many hymn writers; for instance, Gleim in _The Goodness of God_:

For whom did Thy goodness create the world so beautiful, O God? For whom are the flowers on hill and dale? ... Thou gavest us power to perceive the beauty.

And above all, honest Gellert:

The skies, the globe, the seas, praise the eternal glory. O my Creator, when I consider Thy might and the wisdom of Thy ways.... Sunshine and storm preach Thee, and the sands of the sea.

Ewald von Kleist excelled Haller as much as Haller had excelled Brockes.

Julian Schmidt says[3]: 'Later on, descriptive poetry, like didactic, fell into disgrace; but at that time this dwelling upon the minutiæ of Nature served to enrich the imagination; Kleist's descriptions are thoughtful and interesting.' It is easy to see that his longer poems cost him much labour; they were not the pure songs of feeling that gush out spontaneously like a spring from the rock. But in eloquence and keenness of observation he excelled his contemporaries, although he, too, followed the fashion of eighteenth-century literature, and coquetted with Greek nymphs and deities, and the names of winds and maidens.

The tendency to depression, increased by his failure to adapt himself to military life, made him incline more and more to solitude.

_To Doris_ begins:

Now spring doth warm the flakeless air, And in the brook the sky reflects her blue, Shepherds in fragrant flowers find delight ... The corn lifts high its golden head, And Zephyr moves in waves across the grain, Her robe the field embroiders; the young rush Adorns the border of each silver stream, Love seeks the green night of the forest shade, And air and sea and earth and heaven smile.

_Sighs for Rest_:

O silver brook, my leisure's early soother, When wilt thou murmur lullabies again? When shall I trace thy sliding smooth and smoother, While kingfishers along thy reeds complain; Afar from thee with care and toil opprest, Thy image still can calm my troubled breast.

O ye fair groves and odorous violet valleys, Girt with a garland blue of hills around, Thou quiet lake, where, when Aurora sallies, Her golden tresses seem to sweep the ground: Soft mossy turf, on which I wont to stray, For me no longer bloom thy flow'rets gay. As when the chilly nights of March arise And whirl the howling dust in eddies swift, The sunbeams wither in the dimmer skies, O'er the young ears the sand and pebbles drift: So the war rages, and the furious forces The air with smoke bespread, the field with corses.

The vineyard bleeds, and trampled is the com, Orchards but heat the kettles of the camp....

As when a lake which gushing rains invade Breaks down its dams, and fields are overflowed. So floods of fire across the region spread, And standing corn by crackling flames is mowed: Bellowing the cattle fly; the forests burn, And their own ashes the old stems in-urn.

He too, who fain would live in purity, Feels nature treacherous, hears examples urge, As one who, falling overboard at sea, Beats with his arms and feet the buoyant surge, And climbs at length against some rocky brink, Only beneath exhausted strength to sink.

My cheek bedewed with holy tears in vain, To love and heaven I vowed a spotless truth: Too soon the noble tear exhaled again, Example conquered, and the glow of youth To live as live one's comrades seems allowed; He who would be a man, must quit the crowd.

He, too, wrote with hymn-like swing in praise of the Creator: 'Great is the Lord! the unnumbered heavens are the chambers of his fortress, storm and thunder-clouds his chariot.'

The most famous of his poems, and the one most admired in his own day, was _Spring_. This is full of love for Nature. It describes a country walk after the muggy air of town, and conveys a vivid impression of fresh germinating spring, though it is overlaid by monotonous detail:

Receive me, hallowed shades! Ye dwellings of sweet buss! Umbrageous arches full of sleeping dark delights ... Receive me! Fill my soul with longing and with rest ... And you, ye laughing fields, Valleys of roses, labyrinths of streams, I will inhale an ecstasy with your balsamic breath, And, lying in the shade, on strings of gold Sing your indwelling joys.... On rosy clouds, with rose and tulip crowned, Spring has come down from heaven.... The air grew softer, fields took varied hues, The shades were leafy, and soft notes awoke And flew and warbled round the wood in twilight greenery. Brooks took a silver tint, sweet odours filled the air, The early shepherd's pipe was heard by Echo in the dale.... Most dear abode! Ah, were I but allowed Down in the shade by yon loquacious brook Henceforth to live! O sky! thou sea of love, Eternal spring of health, will not thy waters succour me? Must, my life's blossom wither, stifled by the weeds?

Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style, wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste[4]:--_Spring_, _Morning, Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The Meadow in the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and Wine, Winter Night, Longing for Spring_, etc.

Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring Songs:

See the blossoming of Spring! Will't not taste the joys it showers? Dost not feel its impulse thrill? Friends! away our cares we'll fling! In the joyous time of flowers, Love and Bacchus have their will.

and

O forest, O green shady paths, Dear place of spring's display! My good luck from the thronging town Has brought me here away.

O what a fresh breeze flows Down from the wooded hill, How pleasantly the west wind flies With rustling dewy wing Across the vale, Where all is green and blossoming.

The personification is more marked in this:

Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God! The hours conduct him to his flowery throne Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the plain, The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing. The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that enchants, O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ... My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love.

His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his writing was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few ideas, that Kleist could write to Gleim[5]: 'The odes please me more the more I read them. With a few exceptions, they have only one fault, too many laurel woods; cut them down a little. Take away the marjoram too, it is better in a good sausage than in a beautiful poem.'

Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered round Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the French style[6] far less than the others--than Hagedorn, for example; and though the Anacreontic element was strong in him, he overcame it, and aimed at pure lyrical feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted friend, we see that he had all the sentimentality of the day,[7] but with much that was healthy and amiable in addition, and he touched Nature with peculiar freshness and genuineness.

In a poem to his brother, about the Saale valley near Halle, he wrote:

Lie down in early spring on yon green moss, By yon still brook where heart with heart we spoke, My brother.... Will't see the little garden and the pleasant heights above, So quiet and unspoilt? O friend, 'tis Nature speaks In distant wood, near plain and careless glade, Here on my little hill and in the clover.... Dost hear the rustle of the streamlet through the wood?

Jacobi was one whose heart, as he said of Gleim, took a warm interest in all that breathed, even a violet, and sought sympathy and companionship in the whole range of creation.

This is from his _Morning Song_:

See how the wood awakes, how from the lighted heights With the soft waving breeze The morning glory smiles in the fresh green.... Here by the rippling brook and quivering flower, We catch Love's rustle as she gently sweeps Like Spring's own breath athwart the plains.

Another song is;

Tell me, where's the violet fled. Late so gayly blowing. Springing 'neath fair Flora's tread, Choicest sweets bestowing? Swain, the vernal scene is o'er, And the violet blooms no more.

Say, where hides the blushing rose, Pride of fragrant morning, Garland meet for beauty's brows, Hill and dale adorning? Gentle maid, the summer's fled, And the hapless rose is dead.

Bear me then to yonder rill, Late so freely flowing, Watering many a daffodil On its margin glowing. Sun and wind exhaust its store, Yonder rivulet glides no more.

Lead me to the bowery shade, Late with roses flaunting, Loved resort of youth and maid, Amorous ditties chanting. Hail and wind with fury shower, Leafless mourns the rifled bower!

Say, where bides the village maid, Late yon cot adorning? Oft I've met her in the glade Fair and fresh as morning. Swain, how short is beauty's bloom, Seek her in her grassy tomb.

Whither roves the tuneful swain Who, of rural pleasures, Rose and violet, rill and plain, Sang in deftest measures? Maiden, swift life's vision flies, Death has closed the poet's eyes.

_To Nature_ runs thus:

Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep inclining Are the trees upon the plain, In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them, Friendly Nature, speak to me again! Thou art echo and reflection of our striving, Thou art painter of our hopes and of our fears, Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows, Of our consolations and our groans....

While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic, sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than Theocritus, is lifeless. His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to modern readers, but his love was real.

The introduction 'to the Reader'[8] is characteristic:

These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the Golden Age. A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness, and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we nave ourselves enjoyed. Often do I fly from the city and seek the deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town; enraptured, I give up my whole soul to the contemplation of Nature, and feel, at such moments, richer than an Utopian monarch, and happier than a shepherd of the Golden Age.

This is a true picture of the time! Man knew that he was sick, and fled from town and his fellows into solitude, there to dream himself back to a happier past, and revel in the purity and innocence, the healing breath, of forest and field.

The magic of moonlight began to be felt. Mirtilla

perceived his old father slumbering in the moonbeams.... Mirtilla stood long contemplating him, and his eyes rested fondly on the old man except when he raised them toward heaven through the glistening leaves of the vine, and tears of filial love and joy bedewed his cheeks.... How beautiful! how beautiful is the landscape! How bright, how clear appears the deep blue of heaven through the broken clouds! They fly, they pass away, these towering clouds; but strew a shadow as they pass over the sunny landscape.... Oh, what joy overwhelms my soul! how beautiful, how excellent is all around, what an inexhaustible source of rapture! From the enlivening sun down to the little plant that his mild influence nourishes, all is wonderful! What rapture overpowers me when I stand on the high hill and look down on the wide-spread landscape beneath me, when I lay stretched along the grass and examine the various flowers and herbs and their little inhabitants; when at the midnight hour I contemplate the starry heavens!... Wrapt in each other's arms, let us contemplate the approach of morning, the bright glow of sunset, or the soft beams of moonlight; and as I press thee to my trembling heart, let us breathe out in broken accents our praises and thanksgivings. Ah! what inexpressible joy, when with such raptures are blended the transports of the tenderest love.

Many prosaic writings of a different kind shew how universally feeling, in the middle of the eighteenth century, turned towards Nature.

The æsthetic writer Sulzer (1750) wrote _On the Beauty of Nature_. Crugot's widely-read work of edification, _Christ in Solitude_ (1761), shewed the same point of view among the mystical and pietist clergy; and Spalding's _Human Vocation_[9] (written with a warmth that reminds one of Gessner) among the rationalists, whom he headed. He says:

Nature contains numberless pleasures, which, through my great sensitiveness, nourish my mind... I open eye and ear, and through these openings pleasures flow into my soul from a thousand sides: flowers painted by the hand of Nature, the rich music of the forest, the bright daylight which pours life and light all round me.... How indifferent, tasteless, and dead is all the fantastic glamour of artificial splendour and luxuriance in comparison with the living radiance of the real beautiful world of Nature, with the joyousness, repose, and admiration I feel before a meadow in blossom, a rustling stream, the pleasant awesomeness of night, or of the majesty of innumerable worlds. Even the commonest and most familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured part.

Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much of his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into mannerism in the _Messias_, for the youthful impetus which had carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development, and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the finest view in the world.

A mind so intent upon the noble and beautiful was sure to be enthusiastic about Nature; his correspondence is the best witness to this, and at the same time throws side-lights upon the period.

It is difficult to-day to understand the influence which the _Messias_ had upon its readers; even Friedenkende spent happy hours reading it with pious tears of delight, and young and old were of the same opinion.

There is a pretty letter from Gustchen Stolberg[10] to Klopstock, which runs thus:

UETERSEN, 25 _April_ 1776.

In the garden. Yes, in the garden, dearest Klopstock! I have just been walking about, it was so beautiful: the little birds were singing, violets and other flowers wafted their fragrance to me, and I began thinking very warmly of all whom I dearly, dearly love, and so very soon came to my dear Klopstock, who certainly has no truer friend than I am, though perhaps others express it better ... Thanks, thanks, for your very delightful little letter--how dear to me I don't tell you--can't tell you.

C. F. Cramer was his enthusiastic panegyrist. It is not only what he says of the private life and special taste of his adored friend which is noteworthy, but the way in which he does it--the tone in which, as a cultivated man of the day, he judged him. 'He will paint and paint Nature. For this he must be acquainted with her. This is why he loves her so well. This is why he strays by the brook and weeps. This is why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes run over with tears. All creation fills him with yearning and delight. He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream. When he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb it; when a river--oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea! A rock--oh! to look down from its crags to the land below! A hawk hovers over him--oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the stars! He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers. He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death, immortality, and eternal life. Nothing hinders his meditations. He sees everything in relation to something else. Every visible object has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does he feel it all.'

This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes; it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac.

His friend goes on: 'He walks often and likes it, but generally looks for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me, for I run when I walk ... Often he stands still and silent, as if there were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts). And truly there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.'

In another place: 'He went out and gloated over the great scene of immeasurable Nature. Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the dear moon was opposite. Looking intently into her friendly face, he greeted her repeatedly: "Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not away, dear Moon, but stay. What is thy name? Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene? Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?" ... He loved country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets, lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ... Klopstock's life is one constant enjoyment. He gives himself up to feeling, and revels in Nature's feast ... Winter is his favourite time of year....[11] He preaches skating with the unction of a missionary to the heathen, and not without working miracles, ... the ice by moonlight is a feast of the Gods to him ... only one rule, we do not leave the river till the moon has gone.' Klopstock described this in his _Skating_:

O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn Drives glowing now, and now restrains, On city hearths let faggots burn, But come with me to crystal plains. The scene is filled with vapouring light, As when the winter morning's prime Looks on the lake. Above it night Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime. How still and white is all around! How rings the track with new sparr'd frost! Far off the metal's cymbal sound Betrays thee, for a moment lost ...

Cramer tells how Klopstock paid a long-remembered visit to Count Bernstoff at Schloss Stintenburg:

It has a most romantic situation in a bewitching part of Mecklenburg; 'tis surrounded by forest full of delightful gloom, and a large lake, with a charming little island in the centre, which wakes echoes. Klopstock is very fond of echoes, and is always trying to find them in his walks.

This illustrates the lines in _Stintenburg_:

Isle of pious solitude, Loved playmate of the echo and the lake, etc.

but in this ode, as in so many of his, simple personal feeling gives way to the stilted mannerism of the bard poetry.

He wrote of Soroe,[12] one of the loveliest places in the Island of Zealand, as 'an uncommonly pleasant place'; where 'By a sacred tree, on a raised grass plot two hundred paces from the great alley, and from a view over the Friedensburg Lake towards a little wooded island ... Fanny appeared to him in the silver evening clouds over the tree-tops.'

The day on which he composed _The Lake of Zurich_ was one of the pleasantest in his life. Cramer says: 'He has often told me and still tells, with youthful fervour, about those delightful days and this excursion: the boat full of people, mostly young, all in good spirits; charming girls, his wife Herzel, a lovely May morning.'

But, unlike St Preux, he 'seemed less impressed by our scenery than by the beauty of our girls,[13] and his letters bear out the remark.[14] Yet delight in Nature was always with him: Klopstock's lofty morality pours forth all through it. Nature, love, fame, wine, everything is looked at from an ennobling point of view.'

Fair is the majesty of all thy works On the green earth, O Mother Nature fair! But fairer the glad face Enraptured with their view. Come from the vine banks of the glittering lake, Or--hast thou climbed the smiling skies anew-- Come on the roseate tip Of evening's breezy wing, And teach my song with glee of youth to glow, Sweet joy, like thee--with glee of shouting youths, Or feeling Fanny's laugh.

Behind us far already Uto lay. At whose feet Zurich in the quiet vale Feeds her free sons: behind-- Receding vine-clad hills. Uncloud'd beamed the top of silver Alps, And warmer beat the heart of gazing youths, And warmer to their fair Companions spoke its glow. And Haller's Doris sang, the pride of song; And Hirzel's Daphne, dear to Kleist and Gleim; And we youths sang and felt As each were--Hagedorn.

Soon the green meadow took us to the cool And shadowy forest, which becrowns the isle. Then cam'st thou, Joy; thou cam'st Down in full tide to us; Yes, goddess Joy, thyself; we felt, we clasp'd, Best sister of humanity, thyself, With thy dear innocence Accompanied, thyself.

Sweet thy inspiring breath, O cheerful Spring; When the meads cradle thee, and their soft airs Into the hearts of youths And hearts of virgins glide, Thou makest feeling conqueror. Ah! through thee Fuller, more tremulous, heaves each blooming breast; With lips spell-freed by thee Young love unfaltering pleads. Fair gleams the wine, when to the social change Of thought, or heart-felt pleasure, it invites, And the 'Socratic' cup With dewy roses bound, Sheds through the bosom bliss, and wakes resolves, Such as the drunkard knows not--proud resolves Emboldening to despair Whate'er the sage disowns.

Delightful thrills against the panting heart Fame's silver voice--and immortality Is a great thought.... But sweeter, fairer, more delightful, 'tis On a friend's arm to know oneself a friend.... O were ye here, who love me though afar ... How would we build us huts of friendship, here Together dwell for ever.

This is of Fredensborg on an August day:

Here, too, did Nature tarry, when her hand Pour'd living beauty over dale and hill, And to adorn this pleasant land Long time she lingered and stood still.... The lake how tranquil! From its level brim The shore swells gently, wooded o'er with green, And buries in its verdure dim The lustre of the summer e'en....

The inner and outer life are closely blended in _The Early Grave_:

Welcome, O silver moon, Fair still companion of the night! Friend of the pensive, flee not soon; Thou stayest, and the clouds pass light.

Young waking May alone Is fair as summer's night so still, When from his locks the dews drop down, And, rosy, he ascends the hill.

Ye noble souls and true, Whose graves with sacred moss are strawn. Blest were I, might I see with you The glimmering night, the rosy dawn.

This is true lyric feeling, spontaneous, not forced. Many of his odes, and parts of the _Messias_, shew great love for Nature. There is a fine flight of imagination in _The Festival of Spring_:

Not into the ocean of all the worlds would I plunge--not hover where the first created, the glad choirs of the sons of light, adore, deeply adore and sunk in ecstasy. Only around the drop on the bucket, only around the earth, would I hover and adore. Hallelujah! hallelujah! the drop on the bucket flowed also out of the hand of the Almighty.

When out of the hand of the Almighty the greater earth flowed, when the streams of light rushed, and the seven stars began to be--then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty.

When a stream of light rushed, and our sun began to be, a cataract of waves of light poured, as adown the rock a storm-cloud, and girded Orion, then flowedst thou, drop, out of the hand of the Almighty. Who are the thousandfold thousands, who all the myriads that inhabit the drop?...

But thou, worm of Spring, which, greenly golden, art fluttering beside me, thou livest and art, perhaps, ah! not immortal....

The storm winds that carry the thunder, how they roar, how with loud waves they stream athwart the forest! Now they hush, slow wanders the black cloud....

Ah! already rushes heaven and earth with the gracious rain; now is the earth refreshed....

Behold Jehovah comes no longer in storm; in gentle pleasant murmurs comes Jehovah, and under him bends the bow of peace.

In another ode, _The Worlds_, he calls the stars 'drops of the ocean.'

Again, in _Death_ he shews the sense of his own nothingness, in presence of the overpowering greatness of the Creator:

Ye starry hosts that glitter in the sky, How ye exalt me! Trancing is the sight Of all Thy glorious works, Most High. How lofty art Thou in Thy wondrous might; What joy to gaze upon these hosts, to one Who feels himself so little, God so great, Himself but dust, and the great God his own! Oh, when I die, such rapture on me wait!

As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he tuned the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was ahead of his time.

The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially by the Göttingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and conventional began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again. The songs of Claudius were like a breath of spring.[15] His peasant songs have the genuine ring; they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the only modern poet like him.

EVENING SONG

The lovely day-star's run its course.... Come, mop my face, dear wife, And then dish up.... The silvery moon will look down from his place And preside at our meal over dishes and grace.

He hated artificiality:

Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.

His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive humour (the moon was his special favourite):

Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep? Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep, Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep. Fond of all little ones is the good moon; Girls most of all, but he even loves boys. Down from up there he sends beautiful toys.... He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere; Even when father was young, he was there.

The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_:

The moon hath risen on high, And in the clear dark sky The golden stars all brightly glow; And black and hushed the woods, While o'er the fields and floods The white mists hover to and fro.

How still the earth, how calm! What dear and home-like charm From gentle twilight doth she borrow! Like to some quiet room, Where, wrapt in still soft gloom, We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.

Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets of his day expressed night-fall like this:

How still it is! How soft The breezes blow! The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low; Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower. And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land, And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave.... Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star, And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing Awes and revives the timid earth.

Bürger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in _The Village_, and Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the same direction.

My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm; all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a wife in my hut.

The beginning of his _Country Life_ shews that moralizing was still in the air:

Happy the man who has the town escaped! To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks, The shining pebbles preach Virtue's and wisdom's lore.... The nightingale on him sings slumber down; The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet, When shines the lovely red Of morning through the trees. Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God! In the ascending pomp of dawning day, Thee in Thy glorious sun. The worm--the budding branch-- Where coolness gushes in the waving branch Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests, Inhales the breadth of prime The gentle airs of eve. His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest Than golden halls of state Or beds of down afford. To him the plumy people Chatter and whistle on his And from his quiet hand Peck crumbs or peas or grains

His _Winter Song_ runs:

Summer joys are o'er, Flow'rets bloom no more; Wintry joys are sweeping, Through the snow-drifts peeping; Cheerful evergreen Rarely now is seen.

No more plumèd throng Charms the woods with song; Ice-bound trees are glittering, Merry snow-birds twittering, Fondly strive to cheer Scenes so cold and drear.

Winter, still I see Many charms in thee, Love thy chilly greeting, Snow-storms fiercely beating, And the dear delights Of the long, long nights.

Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss was more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer poems; the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from _Luise_ will shew his idyllic taste:

Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley, both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked birch beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot half hid by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and shewn them a green mound under an old beech tree, where the prospect was very inviting. 'There we propose,' said she, to unpack and to spread the breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the boat and be rowed for a time on the water,' etc.

We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's _Elegy to Hangwitz_, for instance, another poem has these lines:

Thither, where 'mong the trees of life, Where in celestial bowers Under your fig-tree, bowed with fruit And warranting repose, Under your pine, inviting shady joy, Unchanging blooms Eternal Spring!

Friedrich Stolberg was a very prophet of Nature; in his ode _Nature_ he says:

He who does not love Nature cannot be my friend.

His prayer may serve as the motto of his day:

Holy Nature, heavenly fair, Lead me with thy parent care; In thy footsteps let me tread As a willing child is led. When with care and grief opprest, Soft I sink me on thy breast; On thy peaceful bosom laid, Grief shall cease, nor care invade. O congenial power divine, All my votive soul is thine. Lead me with thy parent care, Holy Nature, heavenly fair!

He, too, sang the moon; but Klopstock's influence seems to have carried him to higher flights than his contemporaries. He wrote in fine language of wild scenery, even sea and mountains, which had played no part in German poetry before.

TO THE SEA

Thou boundless, shining, glorious sea, With ecstasy I gaze on thee; Joy, joy to him whose early beam Kisses thy lip, bright ocean stream. Thanks for the thousand hours, old sea, Of sweet communion held with thee; Oft as I gazed, thy billowy roll Woke the deep feelings of my soul.

There are beautiful notes, reminding one of Goethe, in his _Unsterbliche Jüngling, Ode to a Mountain Torrent_.

Immortal youth! Thou streamest forth from rocky caves; No mortal saw The cradle of thy might, No ear has heard Thy infant stammering in the gushing Spring. How lovely art thou in thy silver locks! How dreadful thundering from the echoing crags! At thy approach The firwood quakes; Thou easiest down, with root and branch, the fir Thou seizest on the rock, And roll'st it scornful like a pebble on. Thee the sun clothes in dazzling beams of glory, And paints with colours of the heavenly bow The clouds that o'er thy dusky cataracts climb. Why hasten so to the cerulean sea? Is not the neighbourhood of heaven good? Not grand thy temple of encircling rocks? Not fair the forest hanging o'er thy bed? Hasten not so to the cerulean sea; Youth, thou art here, Strong as a god, Free as a god, Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below, The wavering lustre of the silent sea, Now softly silvered by the swimming moon, Now rosy golden in the western beam; Youth, what is silken rest, And what the smiling of the friendly moon, Or gold or purple of the evening sun, To him who feels himself in thraldom's bonds? Here thou canst wildly stream As bids thy heart; Below are masters, ever-changeful minds, Or the dead stillness of the servile main. Hasten not so to the cerulean sea; Youth, thou art here, Strong as a god, Free as a god.

Here we have, with all Klopstock's pathos, a love for the wild and grandiose in Nature, almost unique in Germany, in this time of idyllic sentimentality. But the discovery of the beauty of romantic mountain scenery had been made by Rousseau some time before, for Rousseau, too, was a typical forerunner, and his romances fell like a bomb-shell among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day.