As regards our subject, Klopstock performed this function--he tuned
the strings of feeling for Nature to a higher pitch, thereby
excelling all his contemporaries. His poetry always tended to
extravagance; but in thought, feeling, and language alike, he was
ahead of his time.

The idyllic was now cultivated with increased fervour, especially by
the Goettingen Brotherhood of Poets. The artificial and conventional
began to wane, and Nature's own voice was heard again. The songs of
Claudius were like a breath of spring.[15] His peasant songs have the
genuine ring; they are hail-fellow-well-met with Nature. Hebel is the
only modern poet like him.

EVENING SONG

The lovely day-star's run its course....
Come, mop my face, dear wife,
And then dish up....
The silvery moon will look down from his place
And preside at our meal over dishes and grace.

He hated artificiality:

Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a
pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.

His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive
humour (the moon was his special favourite):

Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep?
Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep,
Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep.
Fond of all little ones is the good moon;
Girls most of all, but he even loves boys.
Down from up there he sends beautiful toys....
He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere;
Even when father was young, he was there.

The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_:

The moon hath risen on high,
And in the clear dark sky
The golden stars all brightly glow;
And black and hushed the woods,
While o'er the fields and floods
The white mists hover to and fro.

How still the earth, how calm!
What dear and home-like charm
From gentle twilight doth she borrow!
Like to some quiet room,
Where, wrapt in still soft gloom,
We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.

Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets
of his day expressed night-fall like this:

How still it is! How soft
The breezes blow!
The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low;
Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower
With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower.
And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land,
And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave....
Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unli