Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated the Seasons, when he had finished his Irdisches Vergnuegen in Gott.  This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fashion in poetry.  Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson’s strophes.  It treats of fire in 138 verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74, while flowers and fruit are dissected and analyzed at great length; and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together, but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional sort.  He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as an amusement, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means ’whereby man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same time.’

So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingratitude was a wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom.  I therefore composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself and others, and this led at last to the first part of my Irdisches Vergnuegen. (1721.)

His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois: 

The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo—­the skin is no less useful.  Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and almightiness of the Creator shine forth from this animal?

For the rest, the following lines from Irdisches Vergnuegen in Gott will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood: 

  Lately as I sat on the green grass
  Shaded by a lime tree, and read,
  I raised my eyes by chance and saw
  Different trees here and there, some far, some near,
  Some half, some all in light, and some in shade,
  Their boughs bowed down by leaves. 
  I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead
  Were crowned and adorned. 
  To describe the green grace
  And the landscape it makes so sweet,
  And at the same time prolong my pleasure,
  I took pencil and paper
  And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme,
  To the glory of God their Creator. 
  Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes,
  There certainly is none which does not pale
  Beside green boughs,