The envelope of his spiritual nature was so tenuous that he seemed to
respond to all the subtler influences of the universe; a sensitive
chord attuned to poetic values, he appeared to exercise an almost
mediumistic refraction and revelation of matters which lie only in the
realm of the transcendental--

"Weaving about the commonplace of things
The golden haze of morning's blushing glow."

In reading Novalis, it is hardly possible to discriminate between
discourse and dreaming; his passion was for remote, never-experienced
things--

"Ah, lonely stands, and merged in woe,
Who loves the past with fervent glow!"

His homesickness for the invisible world became an almost sensuous
yearning for the joys of death.

In the first volume of the _Athenæum_ (1798) a place of honor was
given to his group of apothegms, _Pollen_ (rather an unromantic
translation for "_Blüthenstaub_"); these were largely supplemented by
materials found after his death, and republished as _Fragments_. In
the last volume of the same journal (1800) appeared his _Hymns to
Night_. Practically all of his other published works are posthumous:
his unfinished novel, _Henry of Ofterdingen_; a set of religious
hymns; the beginnings of a "physical novel," _The Novices at Saïs_.

Novalis's aphoristic "seed-thoughts" reveal Fichte's transcendental