a great many wishing songs: 'Were I a little bird and had
two wings, I would fly to thee,' or 'Were I a wild falcon, I would
take flight and fly down before a rich citizen's house--a little maid
is there,' etc. 'And were my love a brooklet cold, and sprang out of
a stone, little should I grieve if I were but a green wood; green is
the wood, the brooklet is cold, my love is shapely.' The betrayed
maiden cries: 'Would God I were a white swan! I would fly away over
mountain and deep valley o'er the wide sea, so that my father and
mother should not know where I was.'

Flowers were used symbolically in many ways; roses are always the
flowers of love. 'Pretty girls should be kissed, roses should be
gathered,' was a common saying; and 'Gather roses by night, for then
all the leaves are covered with cooling dew.' 'The roses are ready to
be gathered, so gather them to-day. He who does not gather in summer,
will not gather in winter.' There is tenderness in this: 'I only know
a little blue flower, the colour of the sky; it grows in the green
meadow, 'tis called forget-me-not.'

These are sadder:

There is a lime tree in this valley,
O God! what does it there?
It will help me to grieve
That I have no lover.

'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall
see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till
my death.'

Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and
other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[9]
where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[10]

Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all
nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and roses spring
up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.

We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although
honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly
in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every
one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:

'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in
the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The
night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the
morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The
moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with
false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and