haracters only the more by the traces
of the _canticus canticorum_ in them, as in all devout love lyrics.

Any one curious in such matters may turn to a very striking poem by
Dante's contemporary, Frauenlob, in Von der Hagen's great collection.
Also to a very strange composition, from the heyday of minne-song,
by Heinrich von Meissen. This is not the furious love ode, but the
ceremonious epithalamium of devotional poetry. It is the bearing in
triumph, among flare of torches and incense smoke, over flower-strewn
streets and beneath triumphal arches, of the Bride of the Soul, her
enthroning on a stately couch, like some new-wed Moorish woman, for
men to come and covet and admire. Above all, and giving one a shock of
surprise by association with the man's other work, is a very long and
elaborate poem addressed to Christ or God by no less a minnesinger than
Master Gottfried of Strasburg. In it the Beloved is compared to all the
things desired by eye or ear or taste or smell: cool water and fruit
slaking feverish thirst, lilies with vertiginous scent, wine firing the
blood, music wakening tears, precious stones of Augsburger merchants,
essences and spices of an Eastern cargo:--

"Ach herzen Trut, genaden vol,
Ach wol u je mer mere wol,
Ein suez in Arzenie
Ach herzen bruch, ach herzen not.
Ach Rose rot,
Ach rose wandels vrie!
Ach jugend in jugent, ach jugender Muot,
Ach bluejender herzen Minne!"

And so on for pages; the sort of words which poor Brangwain may have
overheard on the calm sea, when the terrible knowledge rushed cold to
her heart that Tristram and Yseult had drained the fatal potion.

All this is foolish and unwholesome enough, just twice as much so, for
its spiritual allegorising, as the worldly love poetry of these often
foolish and unwholesome German chivalrous poets. But, for our consolation,
in that same huge collection of Von der Hagen's Minnesingers, stand the
following six lines, addressed to the Saviour, if tradition is correct,
by a knightly monk, Bruder Wernher von der Tegernsee:--

"Du bist min, ih bin din;
Des solt du gewis sin.
Du bist beslozzen
In minem herzen;
_Verlorn ist daz sluzzelin:
Du muost immer drinne sin._"

"Thou art locked up in my heart; the little key is lost; thou must
remain inside."

This is a way of loving not logically suitable, perhaps, to a divine
essence, but it is the lovingness which fertilises the soul, and makes
flowers