Oft I've met her in the glade
Fair and fresh as morning.
Swain, how short is beauty's bloom,
Seek her in her grassy tomb.

Whither roves the tuneful swain
Who, of rural pleasures,
Rose and violet, rill and plain,
Sang in deftest measures?
Maiden, swift life's vision flies,
Death has closed the poet's eyes.

_To Nature_ runs thus:

Leaves are falling, mists are twining, and to winter sleep inclining
Are the trees upon the plain,
In the hush of stillness ere the snowflakes hide them,
Friendly Nature, speak to me again!
Thou art echo and reflection of our striving,
Thou art painter of our hopes and of our fears,
Thou art singer of our joys and of our sorrows,
Of our consolations and our groans....

While feeling for Nature was all of this character, idyllic,
sensitive, sympathetic, but within very narrow bounds, and the poets
generally were wandering among Greek and Latin bucolics and playing
with Damon, Myrtil, Chloe, and Daphnis, Salomon Gessner made a
speciality of elegiac pastoral poetry. He was a better landscapist
than poet, and his drawings to illustrate his idylls were better than
the poems themselves. The forest, for instance, and the felling of