 In contrast to the naïve poet’s direct relation to nature, the sentimental poet foregrounds her own perspective and reflection, precipitating a shift from objects to thought: whereas naïve poets “touch us through nature”, modern poets “touch us through ideas” (NA XX, 438/E  201).[8]  The sentimental poet communicates not his feelings but his thoughts about his feelings: he “reflects on the impression the objects make upon him” (NA XX, 441/E 204). Contrasting Homer, Schiller’s paradigmatic example of a naïve poet, with sentimental poets makes this distinction clear. A modern sentimental poet, having recounted a heroic deed, “would hardly have waited … to testify to his delight at this action”; we, as his sentimental audience, would “also pause in our hearts while reading and eagerly distance ourselves from the subject matter in order to look at ourselves” (NA XX, 435/E 199, italics mine). There is, by contrast, “not a trace of any of this in Homer”, who simply recounts events directly, leaving his own response aside (NA XX, 435/E 199). Because they are dealing with the object on the one hand and their own ideas on the other, sentimental poets are always divided. They thus lack the easy, peaceful confidence of their naïve counterparts. Of his sentimental contemporaries Kleist and Haller, for instance, Schiller writes: