Klopstockian note is still more audible. The form is a pseudo-antique
strophe such as Klopstock often used; the substance a rhetorical
denunciation of military ambition. The most awful curses are imprecated
upon the head of the ruthless 'conqueror', whose badness is portrayed in
lurid images and wild syntax that fairly rack the German language.[9] No
wonder that editor Haug cautioned the young poet against nonsense,
obscurity and exaggerated metatheses.

Nor is there much more of promise in the few occasional poems that have
come down from Schiller's salad days in the academy. One of them was
inspired by a visit of the emperor Joseph, whom our poet glorifies in
strains almost too fervid for utterance.[10] The other two are birthday
greetings to Franziska von Hohenheim--effusions of 'gratitude', as it is
called. The gratitude purports to come, in one of the poems, from the
_ecole des demoiselles_, which Franziska had founded as a feminine
pendant to the academy. Schiller's verses, truth to tell, sound like
rank fustian. The duke's mistress is glorified as a paragon of virtue.
'Her sweet name flies high on the wings of glory, her very glance
promises immortality. Her life is the loveliest harmony, irradiated by a
thousand virtuous deeds.' And so on. As poetic spokesman of the girls he
pours out those 'Elysian feelings' which he supposes them to cherish
toward their kind and virtuous 'mother'.

There are two or three extant school orations which likewise exhibit
him in the role of a fervid eulogist. The rhetoric of them is very
highfalutin, and the flattery would be nauseating if one did not
remember that it was largely a matter of fashion. Custom required that
a prince be addressed in the language of adulation, and nothing in that
line was too extravagant for the taste of the time. As for Schiller, he
had got the reputation of an orator and he only did what was expected