’The cheerful pageant of the glorious evening rocked him in soft imaginings; the flower of his heart was visible now and then as by sheet lightning.’  He looked at Nature with the mystic’s eye, and described her fantastically: 

I am never tired of looking minutely at the different plants.  Growing plants are the direct language of the earth; each new leaf, each remarkable flower, is a mystery which projects itself, and because it cannot move with love and longing, nor attain to words, is a dumb, quiet plant.  When in solitude one finds such a flower, does it not seem as if all around it were brightened, and, best of all, do not the little feathered notes around it remain near?  One could weep for joy, and there, far from the world, stick hands and feet into the earth, to take root, and never more leave so delightful a spot.  This green mysterious carpet of love is drawn over the whole earth.

It is not surprising that night should attract this unnaturally excited imagination most of all: 

    Sacred, inexpressible, mysterious Night, delicious balsam drops
    from thy hands, from the poppy sheaf; thou upliftest the heavy
    wings of the Spirit.[24]

Night and death are delight and bliss.

The fairy-like tale of Hyacinth and Little Rose, with its charming personifications, is refreshing after all this: 

The violet told the strawberry in confidence, she told her friend the gooseberry, who never ceased to jeer when Hyacinth went, so the whole garden and wood soon knew it, and when Hyacinth went out, voices from all sides cried out, ’Little Rose is my favourite.’  When he goes into the wide world to find the land of Isis, he asks the way of the animals, and of springs, rocks, and trees, and the flowers smile at him, the springs offer him a fresh drink, and there is wonderful music when he comes home.  ’O that men could understand the music of Nature!’ cries the listener in the tale.  Then follows a description of ’the sweet passion for the being of Nature and her enchanting raptures,’ and the charm of the poetic imagination which finds ’a great sympathy with man’s heart’ in all the external world.  For example, in the breath of wind, which ’with a thousand dark and dolorous notes seems to dissolve one’s quiet grief into one deep melodious sigh of all Nature.’

’And am I myself other than the stream when I gaze gloomily down into its waters and lose my thoughts in its flow?’ And in ecstasy the youth exclaims:  ’Whose heart does not leap for joy, when he feels Nature’s innermost life in its fulness, when that powerful feeling, for which language has no other name than love and bliss, spreads like a vapour through his being, and he sinks, palpitating, on the dark alluring breast of Nature, and his poor self is lost in the overwhelming waves of joy?’[25]

Here we have the key to the romantic feeling for Nature—­communion of the soul with Nature in a twilight mood of dreamy absorption.