ndia, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts of
human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or
environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each
complete in itself; in the _Nibelungenlied_ Nature plays no part at
all, not even as framework.

Time is indicated as sparsely as possible:

'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant horsemen
arrived.'

'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew
towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was
cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through
the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was
over, night fell.'

Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison with
Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions contain!

It is no better with descriptions of place:

'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well,
towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.'

'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.'

'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath
it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.'

Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite
matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon
lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ...
there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the
broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.'

'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ...

'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round
about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'

One thinks instinctively of Indian and Greek poetry, of Adonis and
the death of Baldur in the Northern Saga. But even here, where the
subject almost suggests it, there is no trace of Nature's sympathy
with man.

References to the animal world too--Chriemhild's dreams of the
falcons seized by two eagles, and the two wild boars which attacked
Siegfried, the game hunted in the forests by the heroes who run like
panthers--all show it to be of no importance.

Even such phrases as rosy-red, snow-white, etc., are rare--'Her
lovely face became all rosy-red with pleasure'; but there is a
certain tenderness in the comparisons of Chriemhild:

'Then came the lovely maiden, even as morning red from sombre clouds
outbreaking,' and, 'just as the moon in brightness excels the
brightest stars, and suddenly