Bear me then to yonder rill,
  Late so freely flowing,
  Watering many a daffodil
  On its margin glowing. 
  Sun and wind exhaust its store,
  Yonder rivulet glides no more.

  Lead me to the bowery shade,
  Late with roses flaunting,
  Loved resort of youth and maid,
  Amorous ditties chanting. 
  Hail and wind with fury shower,
  Leafless mourns the rifled bower!

  Say, where bides the village maid,
  Late yon cot adorning? 
  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 the tree, are well drawn; whereas the sickly sweet Rococo verse in imitation of the French, and reminding one more of Longos than Theocritus, is lifeless.  His rhapsody about Nature is uncongenial to modern readers, but his love was real.

The introduction ’to the Reader’[8] is characteristic: 

These Idylls are the fruits of some of my happiest hours; of those hours when imagination and tranquillity shed their sweetest influence over me, and, excluding all which belongs to the period in which we live, recalled all the charms and delights of the Golden Age.  A noble and well-regulated mind dwells with pleasure on these images of calm tranquillity and uninterrupted happiness, and the scenes in which the poet delineates the simple beauties of uncorrupted nature are endeared to us by the resemblance we fancy we perceive in them to the most blissful moments that we nave ourselves enjoyed.  Often do I fly from the city and seek the deepest solitudes; there, the beauties of the landscape soothe and console my heart, and gradually disperse those impressions of solicitude and disgust which accompanied me from the town; enraptured,