feathers
With golden chains,
He soared up very high,
And flew into other lands.

"I saw the falcon since,
Flying happily;
He carried on his foot
Silken straps,
And his plumage was
All red of gold....
May God send them together,
Who would fain be loved."

The key-note of the whole poem of the "Nibelunge," such as it was written
down at the end of the twelfth, or the beginning of the thirteenth
century, is "Sorrow after Joy." This is the fatal spell against which all
the heroes are fighting, and fighting in vain. And as Hagen dashes the
Chaplain into the waves, in order to belie the prophecy of the Mermaids,
but the Chaplain rises, and Hagen rushes headlong into destruction, so
Chriemhilt is bargaining and playing with the same inevitable fate,
cautiously guarding her young heart against the happiness of love, that
she may escape the sorrows of a broken heart. She, too, has been dreaming
"of a wild young falcon that she trained for many a day, till two fierce
eagles tore it." And she rushes to her mother Ute, that she may read the
dream for her; and her mother tells her what it means. And then the coy
maiden answers:--

"No more, no more, dear mother, say,
From many a woman's fortune this truth is clear as day,
That falsely smiling Pleasure with Pain requites us ever.
I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never."

But Siegfried comes, and Chriemhilt's heart does no longer cast up the
bright and the dark days of life. To Siegfried she belongs; for him she
lives, and for him, when "two fierce eagles tore him," she dies. A still
wilder tragedy lies hidden in the songs of the "Edda," the most ancient
fragments of truly Teutonic poetry. Wolfram's poetry is of the same sombre
cast. He wrote his "Parcival" about the time when the songs of the
"Nibelunge" were written down. The subject was taken by him from a French
source. It belonged originally to the British cycle of Arthur and his
knights. But Wolfram took the story merely as a skeleton, to which he
himself gave a new body and soul. The glory and happiness which this world
can give is to him but a shadow,--the crown for which his hero fights is
that of the Holy Grail.

Faith, Love, and Honor are the chief subjects of the so-called
Minnesaenger. They are not what we should call erotic poets. _Minne_ means
love in the old German language, but it means, originally, not so much
passion and desire, as thoughtfulness, reverence, and remembrance. I