ncient, by a
man of the sixteenth century, or by a contemporary of our own: a
difference, however, solely of mode; for we feel sure that of the three
men each would find something to delight himself and wherewith to
delight others among the elm-bounded English meadows, the fiat
cornfields of central France, the vine and olive yards of Italy--
wherever, in short, he might find himself face to face and, so to
speak, hand in hand with Nature. But about the man of the Middle Ages
(unless, perhaps, in Italy, where the whole Middle Ages were merely an
earlier Renaissance) we could have no such assurance; nay, we might be
persuaded that, however great his genius, be he even a Gottfried von
Strassburg, or a Walther von der Vogelweide, or the unknown Frenchman
who has left us "Aucassin et Nicolette," he would bring back impressions
only of two things, authorized and consecrated by the poetic routine of
his contemporaries--of spring and of the woods.

There is nothing more characteristic of mediaeval poetry than this
limitation. Of autumn, of winter; of the standing corn, the ripening
fruit of summer; of all these things so dear to the ancients and to all
men of modern times, the Middle Ages seem to know nothing. The autumn
harvests, the mists and wondrous autumnal transfiguration of the
humblest tree, or bracken, or bush; the white and glittering splendour
of winter, and its cosy life by hearth or stove; the drowsiness of
summer, its suddenly inspired wish for shade and dew and water, all this
left them stolid. To move them was required the feeling of spring, the
strongest, most complete and stirring impression which, in our temperate
climates, can be given by Nature. The whole pleasurableness of warm air,
clear moist sky, the surprise of the shimmer of pale green, of the
yellowing blossom on tree tops, the first flicker of faint shadow where
all has been uniform, colourless, shadeless; the replacing of the long
silence by the endless twitter and trill of birds, endless in its way as
is the sea, twitter and trill on every side, depths and depths of it, of
every degree of distance and faintness, a sea of bird song; and along
with this the sense of infinite renovation to all the earth and to man's
own heart. Of all Nature's effects this one alone goes sparkling to the
head; and it alone finds a response in mediaeval poetry. Spring, spring,
endless spring--for three long centuries throughout the world a dreary
green monotony of spr