herds, 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 sonnet _An 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 the _Evening Song_:

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,
Koenigsberg, 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's _Pleasure of Spring_,
and _Poetic 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