Part 33 (2/2)

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 G.o.d!

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 repet.i.tion 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 blus.h.i.+ng 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.

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