Part 36 (1/2)

We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in both the brothers s...o...b..rg. In Christian s...o...b..rg'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 s...o...b..rg 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, s.h.i.+ning, 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 Jungling, 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 gus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d, Free as a G.o.d, Though yonder beckon treacherous calms below, The wavering l.u.s.tre 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 G.o.d, Free as a G.o.d.

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-sh.e.l.l among all the idyllic pastoral fiction of the day.

CHAPTER XI

THE AWAKENING OF FEELING FOR THE ROMANTIC