of that forgotten spring, describes it in glowing
language. "At that time," he says, "believers sang of faith, lovers of
love, knights described knightly actions and battles; and loving,
believing knights were their chief audience. The spring, beauty, gayety,
were objects that could never tire: great duels and deeds of arms carried
away every hearer, the more surely, the stronger they were painted; and as
the pillars and dome of the church encircle the flock, so did religion, as
the highest, encircle poetry and reality; and every heart, in equal love,
humbled itself before her." Carlyle, too, has listened with delight to
those merry songs of spring. "Then truly," he says, "was the time of
singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and
the simple, men, women, and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in
hearing it done. It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of
manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray--not, indeed, without
infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music--were
bidding it welcome." And yet it was not all gladness; and it is strange
that Carlyle, who has so keen an ear for the silent melancholy of the
human heart, should not have heard that tone of sorrow and fateful boding
which breaks, like a suppressed sigh, through the free and light music of
that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in
Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether
we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the "Nibelunge," or
to Wolfram's grand poems of the "Parcival" and the "Holy Grail," it is the
same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,--in joy a
fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of hope, and throughout the whole, a
silent wondering at this strange world. Here is a specimen of an anonymous
poem; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. It was
written before the twelfth century; its language is strangely simple, and
sometimes uncouth. But there is truth in it; and it is truth after all,
and not fiction, that is the secret of all poetry:--

"It has pained me in the heart,
Full many a time,
That I yearned after that
Which I may not have,
Nor ever shall win.
It is very grievous.
I do not mean gold or silver;
It is more like a human heart.

"I trained me a falcon,
More than a year.
When I had tamed him,
As I would have him,
And had well tied his