ightingale,
Sweet bird, may it ever be blessed!
Sang so lustily upon the bough
That many a heart was filled with joy and good humour.
There the company pitched itself
With great delight on the green grass.
The limes gave enough shade,
And many covered their tent roofs with green boughs.

There is a heartfelt ring in this. We see that even this early period
of German mediaeval poetry was not entirely lacking in clear voices to
sing of Nature with real sympathy.

The description of the Minne grotto is famous, with its magical
accessories, its limes and other trees, birds, songs, and flowers, so
that 'eye and ear alike found solace'; but the romantic love episode,
interwoven as it is by the poet with the life of Nature, is more
interesting for our purpose.

They had a court, they had a council which brought them nought
but joy. Their courtiers were the green trees, the shade and the
sunlight, the streamlet and the spring; flowers, grass, leaf, and
blossom, which refreshed their eyes. Their service was the song
of the birds, the little brown nightingales, the throstlets and
the merles and other wood birds. The siskin and the ringdove vied
with each other to do them pleasure, all day long their music
rejoiced ear and soul. Their love was their high feast.... The
man was with the woman, and the woman with the man; they had the
fellowship they most desired, and were where they fain would
be....

In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where grass
and flowers alike had been refreshed. The glade was their
pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each
other's speech, and waking the song of the birds by their
footsteps. Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring
rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow
till the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade.
Then they betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a
welcome shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its
shade, and the couch at its feet was decked with the fairest
grass and flowers.

With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each
other. So in the following:

That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth hand
in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the
flowery meadow and the lovely vale. Dove and nightingale salu