him.  ’He will paint and paint Nature.  For this he must be acquainted with her.  This is why he loves her so well.  This is why he strays by the brook and weeps.  This is why in spring he goes out into the fields of blossoms, and his eyes run over with tears.  All creation fills him with yearning and delight.  He goes from mountain to valley like a man in a dream.  When he sees a stream, he follows its course; when a hill, he must climb it; when a river—­oh! if only he could rush with it to the sea!  A rock—­oh! to look down from its crags to the land below!  A hawk hovers over him—­oh! to have its wings and fly so much nearer to the stars!  He stands for hours looking at a flower or moss, throws himself down on the grass and decks his hat with ivy and cornflowers.  He goes by moonlight to visit the graves and think of death, immortality, and eternal life.  Nothing hinders his meditations.  He sees everything in relation to something else.  Every visible object has an invisible companion, so ardently, so entirely, so closely does he feel it all.’

This, coming straight from life, tells us more than a volume of odes; it contains the real feeling of the time, sensitive, dreamy, elegiac.

His friend goes on:  ’He walks often and likes it, but generally looks for sunny places; he goes very slowly, which is fatal for me, for I run when I walk ...  Often he stands still and silent, as if there were knots which he could not untie (in his thoughts).  And truly there are unknown depths of feeling as well as thought.’

In another place:  ’He went out and gloated over the great scene of immeasurable Nature.  Orion and the Pleiades moved over his head, the dear moon was opposite.  Looking intently into her friendly face, he greeted her repeatedly:  “Moon, Moon, friend of my thoughts; hurry not away, dear Moon, but stay.  What is thy name?  Laura, Cynthia, Cyllene?  Or shall I call thee beautiful Betty of the Sky?” ...  He loved country walks; we made for lonely places, dark fearsome thickets, lonely unfrequented paths, scrambled up all the hills, spied out every bit of Nature, came to rest at last under a shady rock ...  Klopstock’s life is one constant enjoyment.  He gives himself up to feeling, and revels in Nature’s feast ...  Winter is his favourite time of year....[11] He preaches skating with the unction of a missionary to the heathen, and not without working miracles, ... the ice by moonlight is a feast of the Gods to him ... only one rule, we do not leave the river till the moon has gone.’  Klopstock described this in his Skating: 

  O youth, whose skill the ice-cothurn
  Drives glowing now, and now restrains,
  On city hearths let faggots burn,
  But come with me to crystal plains. 
  The scene is filled with vapouring light,
  As when the winter morning’s prime
  Looks on the lake.  Above it night
  Scatters, like stars, the glittering rime. 
  How still and white is all around! 
  How rings the track with new sparr’d frost! 
  Far off the metal’s cymbal sound
  Betrays thee, for a moment lost ...