How gloriously gleameth
  All Nature to me! 
  How bright the sun beameth,
  How fresh is the lea! 
  White blossoms are bursting
  The thickets among,
  And all the gay greenwood
  Is ringing with song! 
  There’s radiance and rapture
  That nought can destroy,
  Oh earth, in thy sunshine,
  Oh heart, in thy joy. 
  Oh love! thou enchanter
  So golden and bright,
  Like the red clouds of morning
  That rest on yon height,
  It is them that art clothing
  The fields and the bowers,
  And everywhere breathing
  The incense of flowers.

Looking back in old age to those happy days of youth, he saw in memory not only Frederica but the scenery around her.  He said (Wahrheit und Dichtung):  ’Her figure never looked more charming than when she was moving along a raised footpath; the charm of her bearing seemed to vie with the flowering ground, and the indestructible cheerfulness of her face with the blue sky.’  In Alsace he wrote: 

One has only to abandon oneself to the present in order to enjoy the charms of the sky, the glow of the rich earth, the mild evenings, the warm nights, at the side of one’s love, or near her.

and one of the poems to Frederica says: 

  The world lies round me buried deep in mist, but
  In one glance of thine lies sunshine and happiness.

There is a strong pulse of life—­life that overflows into Nature—­in The Departure: 

  To horse!  Away, o’er hill and steep,
  Into the saddle blithe I spring;
  The eve was cradling earth to sleep,
  And night upon the mountains hung. 
  With robes of mist around him set,
  The oak like some huge giant stood,
  While, with its hundred eyes of jet,
  Peer’d darkness from the tangled wood. 
  Amid a bank of clouds the moon
  A sad and troubled glimmer shed;
  The wind its chilly wings unclosed,
  And whistled wildly round my head. 
  Night framed a thousand phantoms dire,
  Yet did I never droop nor start;
  Within my veins what living fire! 
  What quenchless glow within my heart!

And very like it, though in a minor key, is the Elegy which begins, ‘A tender, youthful trouble.’

He tells in Wahrheit und Dichtung how he found comfort for his love troubles in Frankfort: 

They were accustomed to call me, on account of wandering about the district, the ‘wanderer.’  In producing that calm for the mind, which I felt under the open sky, in the valleys, on the heights, in the fields, and in the woods, the situation of Frankfort was serviceable....  On the setting in of winter a new world was revealed to us, since I at once determined to skate....  For this new joyous activity we were also indebted to Klopstock, to his enthusiasm for this happy species of motion....  To pass a splendid Sunday thus on the ice did not satisfy us, we continued in movement late