Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) was the first modern German poet and the forerunner of Goethe. Klopstock's Iyrical poetry reveals the timelessness of his great genius.

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg in Lower Saxony on July 2, 1724. From 1739 to 1745 he attended the Protestant School of Schulpforta, renowned for sound training in classics; from autumn 1745 to Easter 1746 he went to Jena University; and from Easter 1746 to 1748 he studied theology at Leipzig University.

The first three cantos of Klopstock's Messias (inspired by John Milton) appeared in 1748 in the fourth volume of the Bremer Beiträge. Messias is a landmark in modern German writing: It destroyed Johann Christoph Gottsched's supremacy; it opened a new literary movement; and it made Klopstock world-famous.

Though Klopstock was not the first to strike a passionately lyrical and religious note in modern German poetry, he, with the proud surety of a born genius, ennobled the...