The material of all things issues from the original womb,For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.Which fashions its own material, not that of others,And does not falter or doubt, but all by itselfLightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,Orders and disposes of everything together.
The material of all things issues from the original womb,
For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;
She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.
Which fashions its own material, not that of others,
And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself
Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.
Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,
Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,
Orders and disposes of everything together.
Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the wisdom and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified everything in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of the stars depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central soul of all things.
The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of Mystics, Jacob Böhme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a ferment of differentsystems of thought. It is very difficult to unriddle hisAurora, but love of Nature, as well as love of God, is clear in its mystical utterances:
God is the heart or source of Nature.Nature is the body of God.
God is the heart or source of Nature.
Nature is the body of God.
'As man's mind rules his whole body in every vein and fills his whole being, so the Holy Ghost fills all Nature, and is its heart and rules in the good qualities of all things.'
'But now heaven is a delightful chamber of pleasure, in which are all the powers, as in all Nature the sky is the heart of the waters.'
In another place he calls God the vital power in the tree of life, the creatures His branches, and Nature the perfection and self-begotten of God.
Nature's powers are explained as passion, will, and love, often in lofty and beautiful comparisons:
'As earth always bears beautiful flowers, plants, and trees, as well as metals and animate beings, and these finer, stronger, and more beautiful at one time than another; and as one springs into being as another dies, causing constant use and work, so it is in still greater degree with the begetting of the holy mysteries[5]... creation is nothing else than a revelation of the all-pervading superficial godhead ... and is like the music of many flutes combined into one great harmony.'
But the most representative man, both of the fifteenth century and, in a sense, of the German race, was Luther. That maxim of Goethe's for teaching and ethics,' Cheerfulness is the mother of all virtues, might well serve as a motto for Luther;
The two men had much in common.
The one, standing half in the Middle Ages, had to free himself from mental slavery by strength of will and courage of belief.
The other, as the prophet of the nineteenth century, the incarnation of the modern man, had to shake offthe artificiality and weak sentimentality of the eighteenth.
To both alike a healthy joy in existence was the root of being. Luther was always open to the influence of Nature, and, characteristically, the Psalter was his favourite book. 'Lord, how manifold are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all!'
True to his German character, he could be profoundly sad; but his disposition was delightfully cheerful and healthy, and we see from his letters and table-talk, that after wife and child, it was in 'God's dear world' that he took the greatest pleasure. He could not have enough of the wonders of creation, great or small. 'By God's mercy we begin to see the splendour of His works and wonders in the little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right time.'[6]Again, 'So God is present in all creatures, even the smallest leaves and poppy seeds.'
All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor Brneck:
I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them.
I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them.
Luther often used very forcible images fromNature. 'It is only for the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind prepare us for it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost.'
His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms: 'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.'
His description of heaven for his little son John is full of simple reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of rationalism and pietism.
Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national songs of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while a like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed the simple familiar relationship of the child of Nature to wood, tree, and flower in touching words and a half-mythical, half-allegorical tone which often revealed their old Germanic origin.
There is a fourteenth-century song, probably from the Lower Rhine,[7]which suggests the poems of the eighth and ninth centuries, about a great quarrel between Spring, crowned with flowers, and hoary-headed Winter, in which one praises and the other blames the cuckoo for announcing Spring.
In this song, Summer complains to mankind and other friends that a mighty master is going to drive him away; this mighty master, Winter, then takes up the word, and menaces Spring with the approach of frost, who will slight and imprison him, and then kill him; ice and hail agree with Winter, and storm, rain, snow, and bitter winds are called his vassals, etc.
There are naive verses in praise of Spring and Summer:
When that the breezes blow in May,And snow melts from the wood away,Blue violets lift their heads on high,And when the little wood-birds sing,And flow'rets from the ground up-spring,Then everybody's glad.
When that the breezes blow in May,
And snow melts from the wood away,
Blue violets lift their heads on high,
And when the little wood-birds sing,
And flow'rets from the ground up-spring,
Then everybody's glad.
Others complaining of Winter, who must have leave of absence, and the wrongs it has wrought are poured out to Summer. The little birds are very human; the owlet complains:
Poor little owlet me!I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night;The branch I want to perch on is broken,The leaves are all faded,My heart is full of grief.
Poor little owlet me!
I have to fly all alone through the wood to-night;
The branch I want to perch on is broken,
The leaves are all faded,
My heart is full of grief.
The cuckoo is either praised for bringing good news, or made fun of as the 'Gutzgauch.'
A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc.
A cuckoo will fly to his heart's treasure, etc.
The fable songs[8]of animal weddings are full of humour. The fox makes arrangements for his wedding: 'Up with you now, little birds! I am going to take a bride. The starling shall saddle the horses, for he has a grey mantle; the beaver with the cap of marten fur must be driver, the hare with his light foot shall be outrider; the nightingale with his clear voice shall sing the songs, the magpie with his steady hop must lead the dances,' etc.
The nightingale, with her rich tones, is beloved and honoured before all the winged things; she is called 'the very dear nightingale,' and addressed as a lady.
'Thou art a little woodbird, and flyest in and out the green wood; fair Nightingale, thou little woodbird, thou shalt be my messenger.'
It is she who warns the girl against false love, or is the silent witness of caresses.
There were a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and mother should not know where I was.'
Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer, will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.'
These are sadder:
There is a lime tree in this valley,O God! what does it there?It will help me to grieveThat I have no lover.
There is a lime tree in this valley,
O God! what does it there?
It will help me to grieve
That I have no lover.
'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till my death.'
Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[9]where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[10]
Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all nations, that out of the grave oftwo lovers, lilies and roses spring up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.
We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:
'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their pasture lands and pastor....'
Fischart too, in his quaint description of a voyage on the Rhine inGlückhaft Schiff, shews little feeling for Nature; but inSimplicissimus, on the other hand, that monument of literature which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the Thirty Years' War.
When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled into the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and waking at midnight, he heard the old man sing:
Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator,While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of allAnd lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praiseTill dawn refreshes the desolate woods.
Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,
Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator,
While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...
The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....
My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all
And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise
Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods.
Simplicissimusgoes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if nightingale, owl, and echo had combinedin song, and if ever I had been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.'
What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during the latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and artificiality, the hatching of empty effect.
The aberrations of taste which found expression in the periwig style of Louis XIV., and in the pigtails of the eighteenth century, affected the feeling for Nature too. The histories of taste in general, and of feeling for Nature, have this in common, that their line of progress is not uniformly straightforward, but liable to zigzags. This is best seen in reviewing the different civilized races together. Moreover, new ideas, however forcible and original, even epoch-making, do not win acceptance at once, but rather trickle slowly through resisting layers; it is long before any new gain in culture becomes the common property of the educated, and hence opposite extremes are often found side by side--taste for what is natural with taste for what is artificial. Garden style is always a delicate test of feeling for Nature, shewing, as it does, whether we respect her ways or wish to impose our own. The impulse towards the modern French gardening came from Italy. Ancient and modern times both had to do with it. At the Renaissance there was a return to Pliny's style,[11]which the Cinque cento gardens copied. In this style laurel and box-hedges were clipt, andmarble statues placed against them, 'to break the uniformity of the dark green with pleasant silhouettes. One looks almost in vain for flowers and turf; even trees were exiled to a special wilderness at the edge of the garden; but the great ornament of the whole was never missing, the wide view over sunny plains and dome-capt towns, or over the distant shimmering sea, which had gladdened the eyes of Roman rulers in classic days.'[12]
The old French garden as Maître Lenotre laid it out in Louis XIV.'s time at Versailles, St Germain, and St Cloud, was architectural in design, and directly connected, like Pliny's, with various parts of the house, by open halls, pavilions, and colonnades. Every part of it--from neat turf parterres bordered by box in front of the terrace, designs worked out in flowers or coloured stones, and double rows of orange spaliers, to groups of statues and fountains--belonged to one symmetrical plan, the focus of which was the house, standing free from trees, and visible from every point. Farther off, radiating avenues led the eye in the same direction, and every little intersecting alley, true to the same principle, ran to a definite object--obelisk, temple, or what not. There was no lack of bowers, giant shrubberies, and water-courses running canal-wise through the park, but they all fell into straight lines; every path was ruled by a ruler, the eye could follow it to its very end. Artifice was the governing spirit. As Falke says: 'Nature dared not speak but only supply material; she had to sacrifice her own inventive power to this taste and this art. Hills and woods were only hindrances; the straight lines of trees and hedges, with their medley of statues and "cabinets de verdure," demanded level ground, and the landscape eye of the period only tolerated woods as a finish to its cut and clipt artificialities.'[13]
Trees and branches were not allowed to grow at their own sweet will; they were cut into cubes,balls, pyramids, even into shapes of animals, as the gardener's fancy or his principles decreed; cypresses were made into pillars or hearts with the apex above or below; and the art of topiary even achieved complete hunting scenes, with hunters, stags, dogs, and hares in full chase on a hedge. Of such a garden one could say with honest Claudius, ''Tis but a tailor's joke, and shews the traces of the scissors; it has nothing of the great heart of Nature.'
It was Nature in bondage: 'green architecture,' with all its parts, walls, windows, roofs, galleries cut out of leafage, and theatres with stage and wings in which silk and velvet marquises with full-bottomed wigs and lace jabots, and ladies in hooped petticoats and hair in towers, played at private theatricals.
Where water was available, water devices were added. And in the midst of all this unnaturalness Greek mythology was introduced: the story of Daphne and Apollo appeared in one alley, Meleager and Atalanta in another, all Olympus was set in motion to fill up the walls and niches. And the people were like their gardens both in dress and manners; imposing style was everything.
Then came the Rococo period of Louis XV. The great periwig shrivelled to a pigtail, and petty flourish took the place of Lenotre's grandezza.
'The unnatural remained, the imposing disappeared and caprice took its place,' says Falke. Coquetry too. All the artistic output of the time bears this stamp, painting included. Watteau's scenery and people were unnatural and affected--mere inventions to suit the gallantfêtes. But he knew and loved Nature, though he saw her with the intoxicated eye of a lover who forgets the individual but keeps a glorified impression of her beauty, whereas Boucher's rosy-blue landscapes look as if he had never seen their originals. His world had nothing in common with Nature, and with realityonly this, that its sensuousness, gaiety, falsity, and coquetry were true to the period. But in both Watteau and Boucher there was a faint glimmer of the idyllic--witness the dash of melancholy in Watteau's brightest pictures. Feeling for Nature was seeking its lost path--the path it was to follow with such increased fervour.
German literature too, in the seventeenth century, stood under the sign manual of the Pigtail and Periwig; it was baroque, stilted, bombastic, affected, feeling and form alike were forced, not spontaneous. Verses were turned out by machinery and glued together. Martin Opitz,[14]the recognized leader and king of poets, had travelled far, but there is no distinct feeling for Nature in his poetry. His words to a mountain:
'Nature has so arranged pleasure here, that he who takes the trouble to climb thee is repaid by delight,' scarcely admit the inference that he understood the charm of distance in the modern sense. He took warmer interest in the bucolic side of country life; rhyming about the delightful places, dwellings of peace, with their myrtles, mountains, valleys, stones, and flowers, where he longed to be; and hisSpring Song, an obvious imitation of the classics (Horace'sBeatus illewas his model forZlatna), has this conventional contrast between his heart and Nature.
'The frosty ice must melt; snow cannot last any longer, Favonius; the gentle breeze is on the, fields again. Seed is growing vigorously, grass greening in all its splendour, trees are budding, flowers growing ...thou, too my heart, put off thy grief.'
There is more nostalgia than feeling for Nature in this:
'Ye birches and tall limes, waste places, woods and fields, farewell to you!
'My comfort and my better dwelling-place is elsewhere!'
But (and this Winter, strange to say, ignores) his pastorals have all the sentimental elegiac style of the Pigtail period.
There had been German adaptations of foreign pastorals, such as Montreux,Schãferei von der schönen Juliana, since 1595; Urfé'sAstréeand Montemayor'sDianaappeared in 1619, and Sidney'sArcadiaten years later.
Opitz tried to widen the propaganda for this kind of poetry, and hence wrote, not to mention little pastorals such asDaphne, Galatea, Corydon,andAsteria, hisSchãferei von der 'Nymphen Hercinie.'
His references to Nature in this are as exaggerated as everything else in the poem. He tells how he did not wake 'until night, the mother of the stars, had gone mad, and the beautiful light of dawn began to shew herself and everything with her....
'I sprang up and greeted the sweet rays of the sun, which looked down from the tops of the mountains and seemed at the same time to comfort me.'
He came to a spring 'which fell from a crag with charming murmur and rustle,' cut a long poem in the fir bark, and conversed with three shepherds on virtue, love, and travelling, till the nymph Hercynia appeared and shewed him the source of the Silesian stream. One of the shepherds, Buchner, was particularly enthusiastic about water: 'Kind Nature, handmaid of the Highest, has shewn her best handiwork in sea, river, and spring.'
Fleming too, who already stood much higher as a lyrist and had travelled widely, lacked the power of describing scenery, and must needs call Oreads, Dryads, Castor and Pollux to his aid. He rarely reached the simple purity of his fine sonnetAn Sich,or the feeling in this: 'Dense wild wood, where even the Titan's brightest rays give no light, pity my sufferings. In my sick soul 'tis as dark as in thy black hollow.'
In this time of decline the hymns of the Evangelical Church (to which Fleming contributed) were full of feeling, and brought the national songs to mind as nothing else did.
A few lines of Paul Gerhardt's seem to me to out-weigh whole volumes of contemporary rhymes--lines of such beauty as theEvening Song:
Now all the woods are sleeping,And night and stillness creepingO'er field and city, man and beast;The last faint beam is going,The golden stars are glowingIn yonder dark-blue deep.
Now all the woods are sleeping,
And night and stillness creeping
O'er field and city, man and beast;
The last faint beam is going,
The golden stars are glowing
In yonder dark-blue deep.
And after him, and more like him than any one else, came Andreas Gryphius.
There was much rhyming about Nature in the poet schools of Hamburg, Königsberg, and Nuremberg; but, for the most part, it was an idle tinkle of words without feeling, empty artificial stuff with high-flown titles, as in Philipp von Zesen'sPleasure of Spring, andPoetic Valley of Roses and Lilies.
'Up, my thoughts, be glad of heart, in this joyous pleasant March; ah! see spring is reviving, earth opens her treasury,' etc.
His romances were more noteworthy if not more interesting. He certainly aimed high, striving for simplicity and clearness of expressions in opposition to the Silesian poets, and hating foreign words.
His feeling for Nature was clear; he loved to take his reader into the garden, and was enthusiastic about cool shady walks, beds of tulips, birds' songs, and echoes. Idyllic pastoral life was the fashion--people of distinction gave themselves up to country life and wore shepherd costume--and he introduced a pastoral episode into his romance,Die adriatische Rosemund.[15]
Rosemund, whose father places arbitrary conditions in the way of her marriage with Markhold, becomes a shepherdess.
Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her confused thoughts.
Not far off was a delightful spot where limes and alders made shade on hot summer days for the shepherds and shepherdesses who dwelt around. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her confused thoughts.
She thought continually of Markhold, and spent her time cutting his name in the trees. The following description of a walk with her sister Stillmuth and her lover Markhold, gives some idea of the formal affected style of the time.
The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went into the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos, where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these, etc.
The day was fine, the sky blue, the weather everywhere warm. The sun shone down on the globe with her pleasant lukewarm beams so pleasantly, that one scarcely cared to stay indoors. They went into the garden, where the roses had opened in the warmth of the sun, and first sat down by the stream, then went to the grottos, where Markhold particularly admired the shell decorations. When this charming party had had enough of both, they finally betook themselves to a leafy walk, where Rosemund introduced pleasant conversation on many topics. She talked first about the many colours of tulips, and remarked that even a painter could not produce a greater variety of tints nor finer pictures than these, etc.
In describing physical beauty, he used comparisons from Nature; for instance, inSimson[16]:
The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so delicate and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so white, as the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind.
The sun at its brightest never shone so brightly as her two eyes ... no flower at its best can shew such red as blooms in the meadow of her cheeks, no civet rose is so milk-white, no lily so delicate and spotless, no snow fresh-fallen and untrodden is so white, as the heaven of her brows, the stronghold of her mind.
H. Anselm von Ziegler und Klipphausen also waxes eloquent in his famousAsiatischen Banise: 'The suns of her eyes played with lightnings; hercurly hair, like waves round her head, was somewhat darker than white; her cheeks were a pleasant Paradise where rose and lily bloomed together in beauty--yea, love itself seemed to pasture there.' Elsewhere too this writer, so highly esteemed by the second Silesian school of poets, indulged in showy description and inflated rhetoric. Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel tried more elaborate descriptions of scenery; so that Chovelius says:
The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy stone, and happy lovers listened to the nightingale.
The Duke's German character shews pleasantly in his delight in Nature. The story often takes one into woods and fields; already griefs and cares were carried to the running brook and mossy stone, and happy lovers listened to the nightingale.
His language is barely intelligible, but there is a pleasant breadth about his drawing--for example, of the king's meadow and the grotto inAramena:
Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the eye. No more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could have been found, etc.Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way.
Very cold crystal streams flowed through the fields and ran softly over the stony ground, making a pleasant murmur. Whilst the ear was thus contented, a distant landscape delighted the eye. No more delightful place, possessing all this at once, could have been found, etc.
Looking through the numerous air-holes, the eye lost itself in a deep valley, surrounded by nothing but mountains, where the shepherds tended their flocks, and one heard their flutes multiplied by the echo in the most delightful way.
Mawkish shepherd play is mixed here with such verses as (Rahel):
Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth gave me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found.
Thou, Chabras, thou art the dear stream, where Jacob's mouth gave me the first kiss. Thou, clear brook, often bearest away the passionate words of my son of Isaac ... on many a bit of wounded bark, the writing of my wounds is to be found.
The most insipid pastoral nonsense of the time was produced by the Nuremberg poets, the Pegnitz shepherds Klaj and Harsdörfer. Their strength lay in imitating the sounds of Nature, and they weremuch admired. What is still more astonishing, Lohenstein's writings were the model for thirty years, and it was the fashion for any one who wrote more simply to apologize for being unable to reach the level of so great a master! To us the bombast, artificiality, and hidden sensuality of his poetry and Hoffmannswaldan's, are equally repulsive.
What dreary, manufactured stuff this is from Lohenstein'sPraise of Roses sung by the Sun[17]:
This is the queen of flowers and plants,The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby.Other beings possess only single beauties,Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.She is ashamed, and blushesBecause she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her.
This is the queen of flowers and plants,The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby.
This is the queen of flowers and plants,
The bride of heaven, world's treasure, child of stars!
For whom love sighs, and I myself, the sun, do pant,
Because her crown is golden, and her leaves are velvet,
Her foot and stylus emerald, her brilliance shames the ruby.
Other beings possess only single beauties,Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.She is ashamed, and blushesBecause she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her.
Other beings possess only single beauties,
Nature has made the rose beautiful with all at once.
She is ashamed, and blushes
Because she sees all the other flowers stand ashamed before her.
InRose Lovehe finds the reflection of love in everything:
In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,That pleasant light can nothing be but love,For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;While earth to please the heavenDoth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,The elm and vine stock intertwine,The ivy circles round the almond trees,And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?
In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?
One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,
That pleasant light can nothing be but love,
For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.
Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,
And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;
While earth to please the heaven
Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,
The elm and vine stock intertwine,
The ivy circles round the almond trees,
And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.
And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,
It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,
For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,
The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?
Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these poets, and feeling for Nature was entirely absent.
It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1]
The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with me--'tis your duty.'
Then the Spring greetings:
Now we go into the wide, wide world,With joy and delight we go;The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,The flowers beginning to blow.Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.
Now we go into the wide, wide world,
With joy and delight we go;
The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,
The flowers beginning to blow.
Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,
For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.
And:
What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of SpringFrom one place to another in sheer delight and glee;While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult aroundFair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?
What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring
From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;
While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around
Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?
This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting for the hunt in the early morning):
When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and cool.Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold,And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of praise,Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just awakeGently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost twigs,And it bends them down like children, like good children when they pray;And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green hair.O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know!One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold!
When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,
There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and cool.
Now Aurora paints the fir tops at their very tips with gold,
And the little finch sits up there launching forth his song of praise,
Thanking for the night that's over, for the day that's just awake
Gently blows the breeze of morning, rocking in the topmost twigs,
And it bends them down like children, like good children when they pray;
And the dew is an oblation as it drops from their green hair.
O what beauties in the forest he that we may see and know!
One could melt away one's heart before its wonders manifold!
The sixth line in the original has a melody that reminds one of Goethe's early work.
But even amidst the artificial poetry then in vogue, there were a few side streams which turned away from the main current of the great poet schools, from the unnaturalness and bombast affected especially by the Silesians. As Winter says, even the satirists Moscherosch and Logau were indirectly of use in paving the way for a healthier condition, through their severe criticisms of the corruption of the language; and Logau's one epigram on May, 'This month is a kiss which heaven gives to earth, that she may be a bride now, a mother by-and-by,' outweighs all Harsdörfer's and Zesen's poetry about Nature.
But even by the side of Opitz and Fleming there was at least one poet of real feeling, Friedrich von Spee.[2]With all his mystic and pietist Christianity, he kept an open eye for Nature. His poems are full of disdain of the world and joy in Nature,[3]longingsfor death and lamentations over sin; he delighted in personifications of abstract ideas, childish playing with words and feelings, and sentimental enthusiasm. But mawkish and canting as he was apt to be, he often shewed a fine appreciation of detail. He was even--a rare thing then--fascinated by the sea.
Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,Now in soft curves lies quietly;Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glowMirrors itself in the water below.Sad winter's past--the stork is here,Birds are singing and nests appear;Bowery homes steal into the day,Flow'rets present their full array;Like little snakes and woods about,The streams go wandering in and out.
Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,Now in soft curves lies quietly;Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glowMirrors itself in the water below.
Now rages and roars the wild, wild sea,
Now in soft curves lies quietly;
Sweetly the light of the sun's bright glow
Mirrors itself in the water below.
Sad winter's past--the stork is here,Birds are singing and nests appear;Bowery homes steal into the day,Flow'rets present their full array;Like little snakes and woods about,The streams go wandering in and out.
Sad winter's past--the stork is here,
Birds are singing and nests appear;
Bowery homes steal into the day,
Flow'rets present their full array;
Like little snakes and woods about,
The streams go wandering in and out.
His motives, like his diminutives, are constantly recurring. He uses many bold and poetic personifications; the sun 'combs her golden hair,' the moon is a good shepherd who leads his sheep the stars across the blue heath, blowing upon a soft pipe; the sun adorns herself in spring with a crown and a girdle of roses, fills her quiver with arrows, and sends her horses to gallop for miles across the smooth sky; the wind flies about, stopping for breath from time to time; shakes its wings and withdraws into its house when it is tired; the brook of Cedron sits, leaning on a bucket in a hollow, combing his bulrush hair, his shoulders covered by grass and water; he sings a cradle song to his little brooks, or drives them before him, etc.
But the most gifted poet of the set, and the most doughty opponent of Lohenstein's bombast, was the unhappy Christian Guenther.[4]
He vents his feelings in verse because he must. There is a foretaste of Goethe in his lyrics, poured put to free the soul from a burden, and melodious as if by accident. As we turn over the leaves of hisbook of songs, we find deep feeling for Nature mingled with his love and sorrows.[5]
Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades,Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia!'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed;Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say.'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me,And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers.Ah! that was a good time!I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of days,And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gazeWith an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space.
Bethink you, flowers and trees and shades,
Of the sweet evenings here with Flavia!
'Twas here her head upon my shoulder pressed;
Conceal, ye limes, what else I dare not say.
'Twas here she clover threw and thyme at me,
And here I filled her lap with freshest flowers.
Ah! that was a good time!
I care more for moon and starlight than the pleasantest of days,
And with eyes and heart uplifted from my chamber often gaze
With an awe that grows apace till it scarcely findeth space.
To his lady-love he writes:
Here where I am writing now'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green;And by the slender fig I hearThe gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz.And all the time most ardentlyI give it thousand kisses for thee.
Here where I am writing now
'Tis lonely, shady, cool, and green;
And by the slender fig I hear
The gentle wind blow towards Schweidnitz.
And all the time most ardently
I give it thousand kisses for thee.
And at Schweidnitz:
A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees,You know him well whose many rhymesAnd songs you've heard, whose kisses seen;Remember the joy of those fine summer nights.
A thousand greetings, bushes, fields, and trees,
You know him well whose many rhymes
And songs you've heard, whose kisses seen;
Remember the joy of those fine summer nights.
To Eleanora:
Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitudeBetween your alder rows, and think ...As in the oft-repeated lessonThe young birds' cry shall bear my longing;And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sureHe tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for me.
Spring is not far away. Walk in green solitude
Between your alder rows, and think ...
As in the oft-repeated lesson
The young birds' cry shall bear my longing;
And when the west wind plays with cheek and dress be sure
He tells me of thy longing, and kisses thee a thousand times for me.
In a time of despair, he wrote:
Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny!Twist and split bark and twig,And break the tree of hope in twoStem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder,The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath.
Storm, rage and tear! winds of misfortune, shew all your tyranny!
Twist and split bark and twig,
And break the tree of hope in two
Stem and leaves are struck by this hail and thunder,
The root remains till storm and rain have laid their wrath.
Again:
The woods I'll wander through,From men I'll flee away,With lonely doves I'll coo,And with the wild things stay.When life's the prey of misery,And all my powers depart,A leafy grave will beFar kinder than thy heart.
The woods I'll wander through,
From men I'll flee away,
With lonely doves I'll coo,
And with the wild things stay.
When life's the prey of misery,
And all my powers depart,
A leafy grave will be
Far kinder than thy heart.
True lyrist, he gave Nature her full right in his feelings, and found comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but unsteady as he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so his life and poetry melted away.'
Among those who made use of better material than the Silesian poets, H. Barthold Brockes stood first. Nature was his one and only subject; but in this he was not original, he was influenced by England. While France was dictating a taste like the baroque, and Germany enthusiastically adopting it (every petty prince in the land copied the gardens at Versailles, Schwetzingen more closely than the rest), a revolution which affected all Europe was brought about by England. The order of the following dates is significant: William Kent, the famous garden artist, died in 1748, James Thomson in the same year, Brockes a year earlier; and about the same time the imitations of Robinson Crusoe sprang up like mushrooms.
We have considered Shakespeare's plays; English lyrists too of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shewed deep feeling for Nature, and invested scenery with their own feelings in a very delicate way.
G. Chaucer (1400) praises the nightingale s song inFrom the Floure and Leafe:
So was I with the songThorow ravished, that till late and longNe wist I in what place I was ne where; ...And at the last, I gan full well aspieWhere she sat in a fresh grene laurer treeOn the further side, even right by me,That gave so passing a delicious smellAccording to the eglentere full well....On the sote grassI sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,The birddes song was more convenient,And more pleasant to me by many foldThan meat or drink or any other thing.
So was I with the songThorow ravished, that till late and longNe wist I in what place I was ne where; ...And at the last, I gan full well aspieWhere she sat in a fresh grene laurer treeOn the further side, even right by me,That gave so passing a delicious smellAccording to the eglentere full well....
So was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that till late and long
Ne wist I in what place I was ne where; ...
And at the last, I gan full well aspie
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree
On the further side, even right by me,
That gave so passing a delicious smell
According to the eglentere full well....
On the sote grassI sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,The birddes song was more convenient,And more pleasant to me by many foldThan meat or drink or any other thing.
On the sote grass
I sat me downe, for, as for mine entent,
The birddes song was more convenient,
And more pleasant to me by many fold
Than meat or drink or any other thing.
Thomas Wyatt (1542) says of his lady-love:
The rocks do not so cruellyRepulse the waves continually,As she my suit and affectionSo that I am past remedy.
The rocks do not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection
So that I am past remedy.
Robert Southwell (1595), inLove's Servile Lott, compares love to April:
May never was the month for love,For May is full of floures,But rather Aprill, wett by kinde,For love is full of showers....Like winter rose and summer yce,Her joyes are still untymelye;Before her hope, behind remorse,Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.
May never was the month for love,
For May is full of floures,
But rather Aprill, wett by kinde,
For love is full of showers....
Like winter rose and summer yce,
Her joyes are still untymelye;
Before her hope, behind remorse,
Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.
Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden inThe Faerie Queene:
There the most daintie Paradise on groundIt selfe did offer to his sober eye,In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,And none does others' happinesse envye;The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,The trembling groves, the christall running by,And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
There the most daintie Paradise on ground
It selfe did offer to his sober eye,
In which all pleasures plenteously abownd,
And none does others' happinesse envye;
The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye,
The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing space,
The trembling groves, the christall running by,
And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace,
The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.
Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described.
Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in Derbyshire: