The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 35

The lake how tranquil! From its level brim The sh.o.r.e swells gently, wooded o'er with green, And buries in its verdure dim The l.u.s.tre 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.ble 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, G.o.d so great, Himself but dust, and the great G.o.d 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 Gottingen 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 moons.h.i.+ne 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.

Burger 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 s.h.i.+ning pebbles preach Virtue's and wisdom's lore....

The nightingale on him sings slumber down; The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet, When s.h.i.+nes the lovely red Of morning through the trees.

Then he admires Thee in the plain, O G.o.d!

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 plumed 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 suns.h.i.+ne; 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.