His lyrics are rich in fine scenes from Nature, unrolled in cold but stately periods, and the poetic intuition which always divines the spirit life brought him near to that pantheism which we find in all the greatest English and German poets of his time,[[16]] and which lay, too, at the root of German romanticism.
THE GERMAN ROMANTICISTS
Schiller did not possess the intrinsically lyrical genius of Goethe; his strength lay, not in song, but drama, and in a didactic form of epic--the song not of feeling, but of thought.
Descriptions of Nature occur here and there in his epics and dramas; but his feeling for her was chiefly theoretic. Like his contemporaries, he passed through a sentimental period; Evening shews this, and Melancholy, to Laura:
Laura, a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow....
Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver clear and sunbeam glassing,
Mays into blossom sad autumn by thee:
Night and desert, if they spy thee,