n
English _Minne_ would be "Minding," and it is different therefore from the
Greek _Eros_, the Roman Amor, and the French Amour. It is different also
from the German _Liebe_, which means originally desire, not love. Most of
the poems of the "Minnesaenger" are sad rather than joyful,--joyful in
sorrow, sorrowful in joy. The same feelings have since been so often
repeated by poets in all the modern languages of Europe, that much of what
we read in the "Minnesaenger" of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
sounds stale to our ears. Yet there is a simplicity about these old songs,
a want of effort, an entire absence of any attempt to please or to
surprise; and we listen to them as we listen to a friend who tells us his
sufferings in broken and homely words, and whose truthful prose appeals to
our heart more strongly than the most elaborate poetry of a Lamartine or a
Heine. It is extremely difficult to translate these poems from the
language in which they are written, the so-called Middle High-German, into
Modern German,--much more so to render them into English. But translation
is at the same time the best test of the true poetical value of any poem,
and we believe that many of the poems of the Minnesaengers can bear that
test. Here is another poem, very much in the style of the one quoted
above, but written by a poet whose name is known,--Dietmar von Eist:--

"A lady stood alone,
And gazed across the heath,
And gazed for her love.
She saw a falcon flying.
"O happy falcon that thou art,
Thou fliest wherever thou likest;
Thou choosest in the forest
A tree that pleases thee.
Thus I too had done.
I chose myself a man:
Him my eyes selected.
Beautiful ladies envy me for it.
Alas! why will they not leave me my love?
I did not desire the beloved of any one of them.
Now woe to thee, joy of summer!
The song of birds is gone;
So are the leaves of the lime-tree:
Henceforth, my pretty eyes too
Will be overcast.
My love, thou shouldst take leave
Of other ladies;
Yes, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them.
When thou sawest me first,
I seemed to thee in truth
Right lovely made:
I remind thee of it, dear man!' "

These poems, simple and homely as they may seem to us, were loved and
admired by the people for whom they were written. They were copied and
preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and
some of them were translated into foreign languages. The poem which we
quoted first was translated as an Ita