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, Königsberg, 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. The shady trees, the meadows, and the streams which ran round it, and through it, made it look beautiful ... the celestial Rosemund had taken up her abode in a little shepherd hut on the slope of a little hill by a water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel her confused thoughts.