rt still visible, sun in the sky! Thou art still green, sacred
earth! The streams still rush to the sea, and shady trees rustle at
noon. The spring's song of joy sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The
abundance of the universe nourishes and satiates my famished being to
intoxication.'

This mystical pantheism could not be more clearly expressed than
here:

O blessed Nature! I know not how it happens when I lift my eyes
to your beauty; but all the joy of the sky is in the tears which
I shed before you--a lover before the lady of his love. When the
soft waves of the air play round my breast, my whole being is
speechless and listens. Absorbed in the blue expanse, I often
look up to the ether and down to the holy sea; and it seems as if
a kindred spirit opened its arms to me, as if the pain of
loneliness were lost in the divine life. To be one with all that
lives, in blessed self-forgetfulness to return to the All of
Nature, that is the height of thought and bliss--the sacred
mountain height, the place of eternal rest, where noon loses its
sultriness and thunder its voice, and the rough sea is like the
waves in a field of wheat.

To such feeling as this the actualities are but fetters, hindering
aspiration.

'O, if great Nature be the daughter of a father, is the daughter's
heart not his heart? Is not he her deepest feeling? But have I found
it? Do I know it?'

He tries to discern the 'soul of Nature,' hears 'the melody of
morning light begin with soft notes.' He says to the flower, 'You are
my sister,' and to the springs, 'We are of one race': he finds
symbolic resemblance between his heart and all the days and seasons:
he feels the beauty of the 'land like paradise,' while scarcely ever,
except in the poem _Heidelberg_, giving a clear sketch of scenery. A
number of fine comparisons from Nature are scattered through his
writings [18]:

The caresses of the charming breezes.

She light, clear, flattering sea.

Sacred air, the sister of the mind which moves and
lives in us with fiery force, present everywhere immortal.

Earth, 'one of the flowers of the sky.'

Heaven, 'the unending garden of life.'

Beauty, that 'which is one and all.'

He describes his love in a mystical form:

We were but one flower, and our souls lived in each other as
flowers do, when they love and hide their joy within a closed
calyx.... The clear starry nigh