Simple joy in Nature, free from artifice, gives as great a pleasure as an honest lover's kiss.
His _Cradle Song to be sung by Moonlight_ is delightful in its naive humour (the moon was his special favourite):
Sleep then, little one. Why dost thou weep? Moonlight so tender and quiet so deep, Quickly and easily cometh thy sleep. Fond of all little ones is the good moon; Girls most of all, but he even loves boys. Down from up there he sends beautiful toys.... He's old as a raven, he goes everywhere; Even when father was young, he was there.
The pearl of his poems is the exquisite _Evening Song_:
The moon hath risen on high, And in the clear dark sky The golden stars all brightly glow; And black and hushed the woods, While o'er the fields and floods The white mists hover to and fro.
How still the earth, how calm! What dear and home-like charm From gentle twilight doth she borrow! Like to some quiet room, Where, wrapt in still soft gloom, We sleep away the daylight's sorrow.
Boie's _Evening Song_ is in the same key. None of the moonshine poets of his day expressed night-fall like this:
How still it is! How soft The breezes blow! The lime leaves lisp in whisper and echo answers low; Scarce audibly the rivulet running amid the flower With murmuring ripple laps the edge of yonder mystic bower. And ever darker grows the veil thou weavest o'er the land, And ever quieter the hush--a hush as of the grave.... Listen! 'tis Night! she comes, unlighted by a star, And with the slow sweep of her heavy wing Awes and revives the timid earth.
Bürger sings in praise of idyllic comfort in _The Village_, and Hoelty's mild enthusiasm, touched with melancholy, turned in the same direction.
My predilection is for rural poetry and melancholy enthusiasm; all I ask is a hut, a forest, a meadow with a spring in it, and a wife in my hut.
The beginning of his _Country Life_ shews that moralizing was still in the air:
Happy the man who has the town escaped! To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks, The shining pebbles preach Virtue's and wisdom's lore.... The nightingale on him sings slumber down; The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet, When shines the lovely red Of morning through the trees. Then he admires Thee in the plain, O God! In the ascending pomp of dawning day, Thee in Thy glorious sun. The worm--the budding branch-- Where coolness gushes in the waving branch Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests, Inhales the breadth of prime The gentle airs of eve. His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun, And play, and hop, invites to sweeter rest Than golden halls of state Or beds of down afford. To him the plumy people Chatter and whistle on his And from his quiet hand Peck crumbs or peas or grains