The best marketing campaigns of the past year all have one thing in common — they did much more than just promote their brand. The campaigns we love and that make the biggest impact make us think about the industry, the world at large, and our place in it. Global and national companies can do this easily, but it’s important for smaller businesses to also think outside the box. Channeling your creative energy into your marketing campaigns can help your business attract more attention from customers and leads. Here are ten creative marketing ideas you can put to work in your marketing ideas for 2021.

1. Heat-mapping

There are very few things more powerful than knowing how your website visitors are using your website. By adding a heat-mapping software such as Hotjar, you can start to get aggregate insights into how far your visitors are scrolling down on each page (across device types), where they’re clicking, and also get a clearer picture of their journey on your website.

PRO TIP: Data is only useful if you act on it. Seeing that only 30% of visitors are viewing your form doesn’t do you any good. But, acting on that and adjusting your website to move that form up on the page so that 80% of visitors are seeing it can make a huge difference. Look at your data and make adjustments based on it. You’ll find patterns and themes of how people are using your website (or how they want to use your website). By changing your site to match your user’s preferred workflow, you can convert more leads, help them find what they’re looking for, and create a much better overall user experience.

2. Personalization

Consumers don’t care about you. They care about themselves and the problems that they’re trying to solve. They don’t care about what you do for others or what you’re doing for your business. They care about what you can do for them, their company, or their industry. That’s why personalization is more important than ever. 

Most businesses have started implementing personalization with outreach opportunities like email marketing, but what if you could take that further? Start personalizing the full experience for your prospects and customers. By fully embracing personalization, you can create the experience that each prospect wants to see. This can (and should) go further than just adding their first name.

Create smart content through your website

Give your website visitors a custom experience by delivering content that is specific to their industry, goals, or interests based on their previous interaction with your company or by making assumptions about their role, company, or industry. Even just a little reference to their industry or problems can go a long way.

Retargeting

By determining which pages someone visits on your website, you should start to gain insight into what that person cares about. By using that data, you can serve display advertising to get them to come back to your website based on their actual interests. If you personalize your advertising outreach, you can increase interest in a return visit.

Email

Of course, even though I said that it’s probably the most common place to use personalization, that doesn’t mean that it should be forgotten moving forward. Continue to personalize your email with things like company name, first name, and industry. And then take it even further! Pay attention to the content your contacts are consuming and deliver content to them that aligns with their interests. Personalization isn’t just about delivering something that says, «Hey Sarah», it’s also about serving relevant content to the right people at the right time.

3. Create Content People Want To Read

No one goes online to feel like they’re reading a textbook or a string of keywords stuck together. If you’re still stuffing keywords into your content, please, for all of our sakes, stop now. Today’s online audience responds to content that is engaging, creative, and valuable. This is especially true when it comes to your company blog.

The blog is the first place customers look when they have questions about what you do or how you can help them. The posts they find should have an authentic voice that respects the reader. Your content is what your leads are using to answer their questions, solve their problems, and do their own research. If you’re not providing them valuable, easy-to-read content, they’re going to look elsewhere to find it. 

4. Chatbots

The way that we as consumers use websites has changed dramatically. We no longer like to search around a website to find what we want. It takes too long and gets frustrating. That’s why we’ve turned to chat and chatbots. More and more consumers are turning to chat right away when visiting a website to find the answers that they’re looking for. 

While live chat is really only realistic during business hours, a chatbot is available 24/7/365. By developing a strong chatbot that gathers any information or input that you need while providing information, education, or direction to help the user find what they’re looking for can be extremely effective. 

PRO TIP: Don’t require a user to give up their contact information in your chatbot unless absolutely necessary, however, you can ask for an email address to respond to them later, but asking for their personal information creates a barrier. Your chatbot should be a helper, not a gatekeeper.

PRO TIP 2: You can start building your first chatbot for free using HubSpot! Check it out and start using AI to power the way your visitors use your website.

5. Let Your Graphic Design Inspire Your Creative Marketing

On a well-designed website, the user experience from start to finish will be seamless and easy. But what if that user’s experience with your website actually begins before they click to your homepage?

In order for mobile and online marketing to actually inspire users to click-through to your site, you need to prioritize the graphic design of your ads. If you want to be creative with your digital marketing projects, you can’t be afraid to use striking visuals that will grab the user’s attention. Your audience should be able to tell from one glance at a digital ad what your company is all about. Only creative graphics can tell a story in that way.

6. Pull Back the Curtain With Social Media

For several years, «authenticity» has been growing as a marketing buzzword, and businesses are paying attention. Everyone is trying to find new ways to show their customers who they really are.

Social media is one of the best ways to show your brand authenticity and to marketing ideas for 2021 because it removes the marketing middleman. Posting photos and sharing stories makes customers feel like they’re getting a real sense of what goes on behind the scenes. It also gives you a chance to respond to customer comments in real time, and it gives your business an opportunity to speak directly with customers and leads.

With an authentic approach, you’ll engage with your customers without ever making them feel like they’re being marketed to. People don’t buy from businesses, they buy from people. Pulling back the curtain on your business and showing your human side can help you develop trust.

7. Repurpose Content

One big opportunity any business has is to evaluate all the content that they own and start to find new and fun ways to use it. Have you written a blog post that got a lot of traction? Make it into a video! Break it up and share it in chunks through social media! Update it for the next year (like we’ve done for this post)! 

You likely have a gold mine of content that is just begging you to repurpose it into new formats. You don’t have to spend a ton of time recreating the wheel, just take some time to find new ways to get your current content into the hands of your target personas.

PRO TIP: Google LOVES fresh content and updating well-performing posts fairly regularly is viewed very positively.

8. 1:1 Video

We are so excited about the evolution of one to one video. There are a lot of very cool things coming from companies like HubSpot and VidYard around using video to attract target accounts and prospects to you through the use of personalized videos. We have started using them at HIVE for some account based marketing and it’s taking off like wildfire! We’re getting responses almost immediately and our prospects are loving them!

Video dominates our attention today anyway, but why stop there? By using personalization in your video, you can gain more attention to your videos and ensure that your prospects watch the whole video! 

9. Find Giveaway Opportunities That Align With Your Brand

Contests and giveaways are a great way to get attention online. Everyone loves winning something and by consistently running fun, low cost giveaways, we’ve been able to quadruple the following for one of our clients over the last two years.

Giveaways are an easy way to get engagement, but it takes more than that to convert that engagement into sales. Focus less on what it is you’re giving away and more on how you’re getting people to participate. For example, offer an entry in exchange for new customers liking your Facebook page or for existing customers to refer a friend. The more you can encourage (or require) leads to continue to follow your content or to pull from their network of friends and family, the better continued engagement you’ll see long after your giveaway is over. Creating engagement that will last beyond the run of the contest makes a free giveaway well worth it.

PRO TIP: When contests fail, it’s typically for one of two reasons — 1. you require your followers to do too much in order to qualify or 2. the prize that they win does not align with your target persona. You don’t have to give away a car in order to garner interest and create excitement around your giveaway, but the prize and the amount of effort required to qualify should be in alignment and should line up with your target personas.

10. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is definitely not new, but a lot of businesses fail to see the potential here. There are two sides to guest blogging that can be beneficial for your business — accepting guest posts and submitting guest posts.

Accepting Guest Posts

First, we all know that content is driving so much of the marketing that we do online today. People are looking for answers, education, tips, tricks, and ways to solve their problems. They’re turning to Google and doing their own research to find what they’re looking for. This creates a huge opportunity to be the source for that information. It also creates the need to pump out a lot of content. By opening your blog up to guest posts, you are essentially getting free (they may even pay you) help in developing that content. Remember to always review the content before it goes live to ensure that guest posts are up to your blogging standards. 

PRO TIP: Ensure that all content stays educational.  A lot of people who are looking to submit guest blog posts are writing sales pitches. That’s not what this should be used for. Allow no more than one backlink to that person’s website and require that the content stay educational and helpful, not salesy.

PRO TIP 2: Require that all content is original and not posted anywhere else online. The last thing you want is to get dinged for duplicate content because you posted someone else’s content that already lives on their website.

Submitting Guest Posts

While it can be a full-time job just to create the content to come from your own website, it can be a huge benefit to your company and your website to start creating content on other websites as well. Reach out to well respected websites in your industry or even adjacent to your industry and ask if you can submit a blog post. Share potential titles with them and ensure them that it will be educational in nature. Many websites will welcome this contribution as it takes some stress of creating content off of their plates.

PRO TIP: Do a little bit of research on your website. Run it through a domain authority checker and even website traffic estimator to ensure that you’re putting out the effort for a website that is going to benefit you. We recommend looking for websites with a domain authority (DA) of at least 20 (the higher the better) and with solid monthly search volume. The higher the domain authority and website traffic, the more valuable that post will be for your business.

PRO TIP 2: Make sure that you include a backlink to your website using good anchor text. The word or phrase that links back to your website should be inline with your overall SEO strategy in order to get the biggest bang for that link.

Want To Improve Your Digital Strategy? Start with your website.

Depending on the nature of your company, creativity may not be in your wheelhouse, but there are always opportunities to improve your online presence. A revamped website is the foundation for any marketing campaign you’re creating in 2021, which means that if your website isn’t in top shape you’re missing out on attention from leads and customers.

These are the marketing ideas for 2021.

There are signs that our individualist culture of achievement and brand alignment has jumped the shark.

It’s hard to remember a time when scrolling through Instagram was anything but a thoroughly exhausting experience.

Where once the social network was basically lunch and sunsets, it’s now a parade of strategically-crafted life updates, career achievements, and public vows to spend less time online (usually made by people who earn money from social media)—all framed with the carefully selected language of a press release. Everyone is striving, so very hard.

And great for them, I guess. But sometimes one might pine for a less aspirational time, when the cool kids were smoking weed, eating junk food, and… you know, just chillin’.

Back in the 1990s, our heroes were slackers: the dudes and the clerks, the stick-it-to-the-man, stay-true-to-yourself burnouts we saw in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Slacker, and Reality Bites. In the latter, Winona Ryder’s character, Leilana, chooses the disillusioned musician (Ethan Hawke) over the TV exec (Ben Stiller), and it’s presented as an excellent choice. Nobody cool was trying to monetize their lifestyle back then, or rake in the brand endorsements. Selling out (remember that?) was whack.

But somewhere in the early 2000s, the slacker of popular culture lost ground to the striver. I am not immune to this thoroughly aspirational mindset, and you probably aren’t either. Whether we have side hustles, personal brands, gig economy jobs, or entrepreneurial leanings (I’ve had all four), to survive in the modern economy is to aspire to something much greater than what we are.

The internet influencer is the apotheosis of all this striving, this modern set of values taken to its grotesque extreme: Nothing is sacred, art has been replaced by “content,” and everything is for sale. This is true even when the message is swathed in the language of counter-culture: Eco-conscious influencers see no issue in flying long-haul on free trips from brands. Yoga gurus who traffic in anti-consumerist spirituality promote tea brands owned by Unilever. 

But as anyone who has lived a few decades knows, youth culture swings like a pendulum. The buttoned-up post-World War II period gave way to the countercultural Free Love generation (arguably the original slackers, as they were the first to have middle class comfort to rebel against). Similarly, the 1980s excess of Gordon Gecko’s Wall Street set the stage for the slackers amid the economic recession of the 1990s, with their flannel shirts, skater culture, Beastie Boys and Nirvana records.

Of course, it’s reductive to lump the experience of the billions of people living through those ages into one mostly American cultural trope. But there’s always something to glean from the dominant youth culture of an era. What was cool—what the kids were into—tells us something fundamental about what we valued. And seen through that lens, there’s a marked difference between today’s striving and the slacking of the 1990s.

And, in a modern aspirational marketplace so saturated that fake influencers are now posting advertising-like content that nobody even paid them for, there are signs that our individualist culture of achievement and brand alignment has jumped the shark. If the cycle of history is any guide, once our culture of striving flames out, it may well be time for the slacker to rise again.

The Neoliberal Self

For the internet influencer, everything from their morning sun salutation to their coffee enema (really) is a potential money-making opportunity. Forget paying your dues, or working your way up—in fact, forget jobs. Work is life, and getting paid to live your best life is the ultimate aspiration.

This existence is perfectly aligned with what Will Storr, in his 2017 book Selfie: How the West became self-obsessed, described as the defining person of our age, the neoliberal self: “an extroverted, slim, beautiful, individualistic, optimistic, hard-working, socially aware yet high-self-esteeming global citizen with entrepreneurial guile and a selfie camera.” And while the generation most associated with this archetype—millennials—gets flack for their entitlement and unwillingness to work toward a typical middle class life, there are plenty of reasons millennials have so thoroughly embraced and innovated upon this neoliberal ideal.

“You can see why that happens in terms of the shrinking of middle class industries and the economy,” says Laurence Scott, author of Picnic Comma Lightning: In Search of a New Reality, an exploration of the nature of reality in the digital age, and a lecturer at NYU’s London campus. “Neoliberalism has hollowed out so many ways of [making a] stable income that it’s not surprising that the influencer economy has risen up in this really precarious economic climate for millennials.”

That neoliberal sensibility—emphasizing the importance of markets above the intervention of the state, and typified by the attitude that the tide of growth and globalization will lift all boats—has also given rise to the thoroughly modern affliction that we now call “millennial burnout.” A coinage by Anne Helen Petersen in her memorable piece for BuzzFeed, the idea is that all this self-optimization in the digital age is taking a toll, and leaving us with multiple afflictions, including “errand paralysis.”

Petersen argues that we’re obsessed with self-optimization because—post-financial crisis, saddled with student debt, with little hope of a pension—we simply have to be: “We couldn’t just show up with a diploma and expect to get and keep a job that would allow us to retire at 55. In a marked shift from the generations before, millennials needed to optimize ourselves to be the very best workers possible.”

The result is an economy where it’s more possible than ever to be your own boss, and a lot less possible to buy your own home. And one where it’s literally unimaginable that we’ll ever be able to stop working—at the end of the workday, or in the later years of our lives.

It’s enough to make you want to throw up your hands and admit defeat, if only for a moment of respite. And it’s easy to see how this exhaustion could precipitate the next cycle of slackerdom.

Scott first raised that idea in an interview on Russell Brand’s podcast. “The generation after [this one] may just look and think, ‘I cant believe there was that kind of economy and that’s how people were presenting themselves,’” he said. “There may be a slight distaste to it and reemergence of a slacker 1990s pendulum swing, rather than this quite needy attention-seeking.”

Go Ahead and Sell Out

“Selling out” is not just perfectly OK in the influencer economy—it’s the raison d’etre. Influencers generally do not have a craft or discipline to stay loyal to in the first place, and by definition their income comes from selling a version of themselves. The phrase “famous for being famous” used to be a derisive slur for socialites; now it’s an entire category of global commerce that has landed the world’s youngest “self made” billionaire on the cover of Forbes: Kylie Jenner. 

And now, even public figures who do have a craft have followed suit. Hollywood actors used to worry about undermining their reputations, and would only take on cringe-y but lucrative advertisements that air in markets far removed from their core fanbases. But the internet means there is no such barrier today.

Look no further than Tom Hiddleston’s truly bizarre and memeified ad for Centrum. The talk show host and author Busy Phillips is a celebrity-turned-influencer-turned-celebrity—a transformation you can track from the promos for her network TV talk show, alongside sponsored content for Kate Spade featuring her daughters. And never forget that time when America’s most notable authors shilled for Chipotle.

That today’s celebrities and artists are no longer shy about displaying their endorsement deals with corporations—but rather, celebrate them—feels in stark opposition from the sensibility of the group of comics and actors known as “the posse” in the 1990s. The likes of Kathy Griffin, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and Andy Dick typified the ethos of the slacker era.

“Posse members obsess about the idea of selling out,” A 1997 New York Times profile of the group of actors reads. “Stiller says: ‘A lot of us got disillusioned with hackdom. I remember when Janeane [Garofalo] was starting out, if something killed onstage at the Improv, she would intentionally not do it again. It’s almost like she was going too far the other way, because she didn’t want to be accepted.’”

It’s an attitude so antithetical to today’s ethos of engaging with your audience at all costs that it almost sounds precious. But back then, there was a reputational risk to selling out. Today we’re all too busy plotting our own ascents to notice. 

Influencer Schadenfreude

So what evidence do we have that slackers are making a comeback? Much has been written about the attitude Gen Z has towards the internet: arguably far more sophisticated, suspicious, and interested in ephemeral content that disappears, rather than more permanent content that helps establish a commercially valuable identity.

It’s why we’ve seen the gradual eclipsing of Instagram posts by Instagram Stories and why the “Instagram aesthetic” is now in decline. People who knew no life before social media are already exhibiting an “ironic distance,” as Scott put it, to the very idea of being covertly influenced by corporate interests online. Even Mark Zuckerberg now sees the limitations of the constantly-broadcasting newsfeed he created—and much to the alarm of influencers, Instagram is toying with eliminating likes. 

Fashion, which can also act like a pendulum, reflects this shift too, not just with its redux of grunge, but also with trends like normcore, and roomier pant-leg silhouettes (RIP skinny jeans). It’s all more reminiscent of the laid-back nineties than the mid-aughts striving of athleisure, where you’re always primed for a workout or Instagram picture. Even the once-unthinkable trend of face tattoos—which seems to be at once the ultimate personal branding ploy as well as a near-guaranteed opting out of traditional employment—seem to point to the idea that aspirational culture has reached its stylistic apotheosis.

What’s more, we’ve never been more skeptical of the very social media platforms that have quietly and powerfully shaped influencer culture. (Nor, it seems, have governments around the world.) We once saw these platforms as a frivolous, even fun place to post our memories and talk to our friends and family. Now, we understand them to be an often pernicious driving force behind societal, economic, and political shifts—supranational actors that, far from being the neutral platforms they frame themselves as, feed upon our striving as their sustenance. 

We need look no further than the collective cultural sneering provoked by Fyre Festival to see how much of an appetite there is for influencer schadenfreude, as Scott pointed out. Similarly, in Silicon Valley—where just a few years ago the nerds, strivers, and takers-of-moonshots were exalted as the new masters of the universe—there’s a certain glee in seeing all this hubris brought low. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ spectacular demise has shown just how powerful a personal brand can be (the black turtleneck, the Stanford dropout story, the Yoda quotes) and simultaneously, just how much dysfunction it can conceal. And the slew of books, films, and TV shows about the collapse of her empire shows that we are more keen than ever to deride and mock those we have anointed as the striving geniuses of our era.

Is It Even Possible to be a Slacker Anymore?

But as we settle into our roomier trousers and perhaps take a toke of a legally sanctioned weed pen, there’s a less comfortable question to ask: Is it even possible to truly be a slacker anymore?

The neoliberal economic conditions that gave rise to the influencer—and all those side hustles and personal brands—simultaneously have made it harder to attain a normal middle class existence. Even if your goals are of the modest, slacker variety—an hourly wage job, a roof over your head, junk food to eat, and TV to watch—that’s all a hell of a lot harder to come by these days. 

“Thinking about Reality Bites, I feel like they were relatively privileged, but they were sort of lazing around and they could sort of consist on hardly any money at all,” Scott said. “It’s really impossible to live an urban life on very little money.”

But perhaps that realization will lead some to divest from the belief that hard work and self-optimization will lead us to some capitalist promised land. The neoliberal ideal has reached its peak and, well, it’s not as though we’ve solved income inequality with all our hard work. Quite the opposite. As Storr writes of our culture’s failed promise: “It wants us to buy the fiction that the self is open, free, nothing but pure, bright possibility … This seduces us into accepting the cultural lie that says we can do anything we set our minds to … This false idea is of immense value to our neoliberal economy.” 

Today, the evidence of that myth’s failure to deliver is all around us. We see it in the populist uprisings that conjured up Donald Trump and Brexit, and in the fact that one of America’s most visible Congress members, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, identifies herself as “democratic socialist”—a term that would have been entirely unpalatable in America just five years ago. The idea of socialism as a realistic alternative to individualistic capitalism is gaining currency in youth movements elsewhere, too. It may just be a rumbling, or it could be a sign of a less individualistic (and less aspirational) era to come. 

But even if it doesn’t happen at the economic level, Scott thinks the slacker revival may begin—as so many youth movements do—as a stylistic one. It simply will stop being cool to try so damn hard.

“It might be an aesthetic thing that drives this—just the style element,” Scott said. “A return to the idea that it’s slightly embarrassing to be in the pocket of all these corporations all the time, just for a little bit of money … an idea of artistry that isn’t linked to the corporate world.”

This is definetly The Age of the Influencer.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!

O my friend — but it is too much for my strength — I sink under the weight of the splendor of these visions! A wonderful serenity has taken possession of my entire soul, like these sweet mornings of spring which I enjoy with my whole heart. I am alone, and feel the charm of existence in this spot, which was created for the bliss of souls like mine.

I am so happy, my dear friend, so absorbed in the exquisite sense of mere tranquil existence, that I neglect my talents. I should be incapable of drawing a single stroke at the present moment; and yet I feel that I never was a greater artist than now.

When, while the lovely valley teems with vapor around me, and the meridian sun strikes the upper surface of the impenetrable foliage of my trees, and but a few stray gleams steal into the inner sanctuary, I throw myself down among the tall grass by the trickling stream; and, as I lie close to the earth, a thousand unknown plants are noticed by me: when I hear the buzz of the little world among the stalks, and grow familiar with the countless indescribable forms of the insects and flies, then I feel the presence of the Almighty, who formed us in his own image, and the breath of that universal love which bears and sustains us, as it floats around us in an eternity of bliss; and then, my friend, when darkness overspreads my eyes, and heaven and earth seem to dwell in my soul and absorb its power, like the form of a beloved mistress, then I often think with longing, Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me.