completely raised to the ideal. The most common case, in
the most happy essays, is where the two principles are used together; the
abstract idea predominates, and the imagination, which ought to reign
over the whole domain of poetry, has merely the permission to serve the
understanding. A didactic poem in which thought itself would be poetic,
and would remain so, is a thing which we must still wait to see.

What we say here of didactic poems in general is true in particular of
the poems of Haller. The thought itself of these poems is not poetical,
but the execution becomes so sometimes, occasionally by the use of
images, at other times by a flight towards the ideal. It is from this
last quality only that the poems of Haller belong to this class. Energy,
depth, a pathetic earnestness--these are the traits that distinguish this
poet. He has in his soul an ideal that enkindles it, and his ardent love
of truth seeks in the peaceful valleys of the Alps that innocence of the
first ages that the world no longer knows. His complaint is deeply
touching; he retraces in an energetic and almost bitter satire the
wanderings of the mind and of the heart, and he lovingly portrays the
beautiful simplicity of nature. Only, in his pictures as well as in his
soul, abstraction prevails too much, and the sensuous is overweighted by
the intellectual. He constantly teaches rather than paints; and even in
his paintings his brush is more energetic than lovable. He is great,
bold, full of fire, sublime; but he rarely and perhaps never attains to
beauty.

For the solidity and depth of ideas, Kleist is far inferior to Haller; in
point of grace, perhaps, he would have the advantage--if, as happens
occasionally, we did not impute to him as a merit, on the one side, that
which really is a want on the other. The sensuous soul of Kleist takes
especial delight at the sight of country scenes and manners; he withdraws
gladly from the vain jingle and rattle of society, and finds in the heart
of inanimate nature the harmony and peace that are not offered to him by
the moral world. How touching is his "Aspiration after Repose"! how much
truth and feeling there is in these verses!--

"O world, thou art the tomb of true life!
Often a generous instinct attracts me to virtue;
My heart is sad, a torrent of tears bathes my cheeks
But example conquers, and thou, O fire of youth!
Soon you dry these noble tears.
A true man must live far from men!"