Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow Along the blooming fields; yet their sweet strife Melts into one harmonious concord. Lo! The path allures me through the pastoral green And the wide world of fields! The labouring bee Hums round me, and on hesitating wing O'er beds of purple clover, quiveringly Hovers the butterfly. Save these, all life Sleeps in the glowing sunlight's steady sheen-- E'en from the west no breeze the lull'd airs bring. Hark! in the calm aloft I hear the skylark sing. The thicket rustles near, the alders bow Down their green coronals, and as I pass, Waves in the rising wind the silvering grass; Come! day's ambrosial night! receive me now Beneath the roof by shadowy beeches made Cool-breathing, etc. Schiller's interest in Nature was more a matter of reflection than direct observation; its real tendency was philosophical and ethical. He called Nature naive (he included naturalness in Nature); those who seek her, sentimental; but he overlooked (as we saw in an earlier chapter) the fact that antiquity did not always remain naive, and that not all moderns are sentimental. As Rousseau's pupil he drew a sharp distinction between Nature and Art, and felt happy in solitude where 'man with his torment does not come,' lying, as he says in _The Bride of Messina_, like a child on the bosom of Nature. In Schiller's sense of the word, perhaps no poet has been more sentimental about Nature than Jean Paul. He was the humorous and satirical idyllist _par excellence_, and laid the scenes of his romances in idyllic surroundings, using the trifling events of daily life to wonderful purpose. There is an almost oriental splendour in his pages, with their audacious metaphors and mixture of ideas. With the exception of Lake Maggiore in _Titan_, he gives no set descriptions of landscape; but all his references to it, all his sunrises and sunsets, are saturated with the temperament of his characters, and they revel in feeling. They all love Nature, and wander indefatigably about their own countryside, finding the reflection of their feelings in her. There is a constant interweaving of the human soul and the universe; therein lies his pantheistic trait. 'To each man,' he said,[17] 'Nature appears different, and the only question is, which is the most beautiful? Nature is for ever becoming flesh for mankind; outer Nature takes a different form in each mind.' Certainly the nature of Jean Paul was different from the Nature of other mortals. Was she more beautiful? He wrote of her in his usual baroque style, with a wealth of thought and feeling, and everywhere the sparkle of genius; but it is all presented in the strangest motley, as exaggerated and unenjoyable as can be. For example, from _Siebenkâs_: I appeared again then on the last evening of the year 1794, on the red waves of which so many bodies, bled to death, were borne away to the ocean of eternity.