Many charms in thee,
Love thy chilly greeting,
Snow-storms fiercely beating,
And the dear delights
Of the long, long nights.
Hoeltz was the most sentimental of this group; Joh. Heinrich Voss was more robust and cheerful. He put his strength into his longer poems; the lyrics contain a great deal of nonsense. An extract from Luise will shew his idyllic taste:
Wandering thus through blue fields of flax and acres of barley, both paused on the hill-top, which commands such a view of the whole lake, crisped with the soft breath of the zephyr and sparkling in sunshine; fair were the forests of white barked birch beyond, and the fir-trees, lovely the village at the foot half hid by the wood. Lovely Luise had welcomed her parents and shewn them a green mound under an old beech tree, where the prospect was very inviting. 'There we propose,' said she, to unpack and to spread the breakfast. Then we'll adjourn to the boat and be rowed for a time on the water,' etc.
We find the same taste, often expressed in a very original way, in both the brothers Stolberg. In Christian Stolberg's Elegy to Hangwitz, for instance, another poem has these lines:
Thither, where 'mong the trees of life,
Where in celestial bowers