I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead
Were crowned and adorned.
To describe the green grace
And the landscape it makes so sweet,
And at the same time prolong my pleasure,
I took pencil and paper
And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme,
To the glory of God their Creator.
Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes,
There certainly is none which does not pale
Beside green boughs,
Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.
The green roofing overhead
Makes me feel young again;
It hangs there, a living tapestry,
To the glory of God and our delight....
Beyond many trees that lay in shade
I often saw one in full light;
A human eye would scarce believe
How sweetly twilight, light and darkness
Meet side by side in leafy trees.
Peering through the leaves with joy
We notice, as we see the leaves
Lighted from one side only,
That we can almost see the sun
Mixing gold with the tender green, etc.
and so on for another twenty lines.
Yet this rich Burgomaster of Hamburg, for all that he dealt chiefly
in rhymed prose, had his moments of rare elevation of thought and
mystical rapture about Nature; for instance, in the introduction to
_Ueber das Firmament_:
As lately in the sapphire depths,
Not bound by earth nor water, aim nor end,
In the unplumbed aerial sea I gazed,
And my absorbed glance, now here, now there,
But ever deeper sank--horror came over me,
My eye grew dizzy and my soul aghast.
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