racteristics of the German _Gemut_ (mood,
soul, sentiment, and longing strangely blended) exhale from songs like
the following:

"Sweet nightingale, thyself prepare,
The morning breaks, and thou must be
My faithful messenger to her,
My best beloved, who waits for thee.

"She in her garden for thee stays,
And many an anxious thought will spring,
And many a sigh her breast will raise,
Till thou good tidings from me bring.

"So speed thee up, nor longer stay;
Go forth with gay and frolic song;
Bear to her heart my greetings, say
That I myself will come ere long.

"And she will greet thee many a time,
'Welcome, dear nightingale! I will say;
And she will ope her heart to thee,
And all its wounds of love display.

"Sore pierced by love's shafts is she,
Thou then the more her grief assail;
Bid her from every care be free:
Quick! haste away, my nightingale!"

Even more naive and lovely is perhaps this gem:

"If a small bird I were,
And little wings might bear,
I'd fly to thee:
But vain those wishes are;
Here then my rest shall be.

"When far from thee I bide,
In dreams still at thy side
I've talked with thee;
And when I woke, I sigh'd,
Myself alone to see.

"No hour of wakeful night
But teems with thoughts of light--
Sweet thoughts of thee
As when in hours more bright,
Thou gav'st thy heart to me."

But in whatever sense the chivalry and minnesong were conceived, they
certainly turned toward worldliness. The struggle of the Papacy against
the Empire was accompanied by a struggle of the clergy against the
knighthood. The clerics attempted to turn the warlike and passionate
instincts of the time in the direction of spiritual things. An immense
number of holy legends of good women resulted, the ideals of which were
humility, self-abnegation, and chastity; we have the legend of
Crescentia, a pure woman, who, accused like Saint Genevieve, is at last
justified and saved; others die for their virtue, and are sanctified;
the story of Lucretia of ancient Roman memory is revived in the style of
contemporary court life, where she appears as a white raven.

This spirit of religious revival appears most strongly in a versified
story of the t