Johann Peter Uz, who was undervalued because of his sickly style, wrote many little songs full of feeling for Nature, though within narrow limits. Their titles shew the pastoral taste[4]:--_Spring_, _Morning, Shepherd's Morning Song, The Muse with the Shepherds, The Meadow in the Country, Vintage, Evening, May, The Rose, Summer and Wine, Winter Night, Longing for Spring_, etc.
Many are fresh and full of warm feeling, especially the Spring Songs:
See the blossoming of Spring! Will't not taste the joys it showers? Dost not feel its impulse thrill? Friends! away our cares we'll fling! In the joyous time of flowers, Love and Bacchus have their will.
O forest, O green shady paths, Dear place of spring's display! My good luck from the thronging town Has brought me here away.
O what a fresh breeze flows Down from the wooded hill, How pleasantly the west wind flies With rustling dewy wing Across the vale, Where all is green and blossoming.
The personification is more marked in this:
Thou hast sent us the Spring in his gleaming robe With roses round his head. Smiling he comes, O God! The hours conduct him to his flowery throne Into the groves he enters and they bloom; fresh green is on the plain, The forest shade returns, the west wind lovingly unfurls Its dewy plumes, and happy birds begin to sing. The face of Nature Thou hast deckt with beauty that enchants, O Thou rich source of all the beautiful ... My heart is lifted up to Thee in purest love.
His feeling for Nature was warm enough, although most of his writing was so artificial and tedious from much repetition of a few ideas, that Kleist could write to Gleim[5]: 'The odes please me more the more I read them. With a few exceptions, they have only one fault, too many laurel woods; cut them down a little. Take away the marjoram too, it is better in a good sausage than in a beautiful poem.'
Joh. Georg Jacobi also belonged to the circle of poets gathered round Gleim; but in many respects he was above it. He imitated the French style[6] far less than the others--than Hagedorn, for example; and though the Anacreontic element was strong in him, he overcame it, and aimed at pure lyrical feeling. From his Life, written by a devoted friend, we see that he had all the sentimentality of the day,[7] but with much that was healthy and amiable in addition, and he touched Nature with peculiar freshness and genuineness.
