Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...Die Natur, 1773). He voiced most perfectly the dominant feeling in the seventies when he wrote, after seeing the Falls of the Rhine, those frequently quoted lines: Susse, heilige Natur! Lass mich gehn auf deiner Spur. Leite mich an deiner Hand, Wie ein Kind am Gangelband!--An die Natur, 1775. It was to nature that Homer owed his greatness, as Stolberg says in his ode to the ancient bard: "Es liebte dich fruh Die heilige Natur!.... Weihte dich und saugte dich an ihrer Brust!"1 The poet had spent his boyhood in close proximity to the sea, had grown fond of it (see Letters), and in his manhood sang of the grandeur of the ocean over and over again--the ocean which up to his time had played no conspicuous part in German poetry, and had to wait for adequate treatment in English literature for Byron and Shelley.3 As one reads his apostrophes to the sea, the earliest of which were composed in the year 1777, one feels that they are imbued throughout with the modern spirit andcould have been written only by one whose home was by the sea. His best-known ode begins thus: Du heiliges und weites Meer, Wie ist dein Anblick mir so hehr! Sei mir im fruhen Strahl gegrusst, Der zitternd deine Lippen kusst!.... Wann sich zu dir die Sonne neigt, Errothend in dein Lager steigt, Dann tonet deiner Wogen Klang Der muden Erde Wiegensang. Klopstock's intense delight in skating is surely equaled by Stolberg's exuberant joy in bathing in the ocean's waves, for he continues his apostrophe to the ocean thus: Oft eil ich aus der Haine Ruh', Mit Wonne deinen Wogen zu, Und senke mich hinab in dich, Und kuhle, labe, starke mich. This same entering into the very arms of the ocean, as it were, he expresses..."
