Even the commonest and most
familiar things in Nature give me endless delight, when I feel
them with a heart attuned to joy and admiration.... I lose
myself, absorbed in delight, in the consideration of all this
general beauty, of which I hold myself to be a not disfigured
part.
Klopstock, the torch-bearer of Germany's greatest poets, owed much of
his power of the wing to religion. He introduced that new epoch in
the literature of his country which culminated in Goethe. As so often
happens in mental development, the reaction against prevailing
conditions and the advance to higher ones, in the middle of the
eighteenth century, led first of all to the opposite extreme--balance
was only reached by degrees. What chiefly made Klopstock a literary
reformer was the glowing enthusiasm and powerful imagination which
compelled the stiff poetic forms, clumsy as they were, to new rhythm
and melodious cadence. And although his style degenerated into
mannerism in the _Messias_, for the youthful impetus which had
carried his Pegasus over the clouds to the stars could not keep it
there without artificial aid, the immense value of his influence
remained. He is one of the most interesting representatives, not only
of his own, but of all similar periods of exaggerated feelings and
ideals. Despite his loftiness of thought and speech, and his seraphic
raptures, he was not without a full share of sensuous development,
and women's eyes, or a girl's rosy lips, would draw him away from the
finest view in the world.
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