More noteworthy, for the characterization of the youthful Schiller, is the ode entitled 'Friendship', which purports to be taken 'from the letters of Julius to Raphael, an unpublished novel'. In this poem we have not so much the expression of a real human affection as a philosophy of friendship; just as in the Laura poems we have a philosophy of love. The verses remind one immediately of Rousseau's saying that he was 'intoxicated with love without an object'. Friendship is described as a mystic attraction of souls, identical with the attraction of gravitation. This it is which makes the beauty and the glory of the spiritual world. 'We are dead groups when we hate, gods when we love.' If in creation's All I stood alone, Souls would I dream into the senseless stone And kiss them in a fond embrace. Then we hear of a hierarchy of spirits, ascending 'from the Mongol to the Greek seer, who precedes the last of the seraphs'; and in this harmonious ring-dance of souls Raphael and Julius 'sweep onward to where time and space are submerged in the sea of eternal glory'. Other poems which rise above the general level are 'The Bad Monarchs', a poetic castigation (without mention of names) of the type of ruler perfectly exemplified by Duke Karl of Württemberg, up to about the year 1770; 'In a Battle', a powerful description of the rage of combat, with all its sickening and inspiring details; 'The Pestilence', a gruesome tribute to the power of God as manifested in the horrors of the plague, and 'Count Eberhard the Quarreler', a patriotic battle-ballad in honor of a locally renowned Suabian fighter. Better than any of these, however, from a poetic point of view, is the 'Funeral Fantasy', which was occasioned by the death of young Von Hoven in 1780. One may perhaps doubt the genuineness of the grief that could find expression in such a pomp of words, but there is no doubting the poetic power of pictures like this: Pale, at its ghastly noon, Pauses above the death-still wood the moon; The night-sprite sighing, through the dim air stirs; The clouds descend in rain; Mourning, the wan stars wane, Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres! Haggard as spectres, vision-like and dumb, Dark with the pomp of Death, and moving slow, Towards that sad lair the pale Procession come Where the Grave closes on the Night below.[37]