ted
them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult. The wild
wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if
they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning
greeting. They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise,
answering each other in song and refrain. The spring that charmed
their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden
with its rustling leaves. The blossoming trees, the fair meadow,
the flowers, and the green grass--all that bloomed laughed at
their coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their
heart offered a silent greeting.

The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow
stages, sympathy for Nature grew up. Was it the thirteenth-century
lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ?
For the lyric is the form in which the deepest expression can be
given to feeling for Nature, and in which she either appears as
background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a soul or
symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner life.

As the German court epics took their material from France, so the
German love-songs were inspired by the Provencal troubadours. The
national differences stand out clear to view: the vivid glowing
Provencal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy
German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to
proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other
to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the
occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provencal work; while with
the German Minnesingers, everything--Nature as well as love--tends to
be stereotyped, monotonous.

The scanty remains of Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature
very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast. For
example, Bernard von Ventadour (1195):

It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but
it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves
and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me.

Cold and snow become flowers and greenery under her charming
glance.

As I slumber at night, I am waked by the sweet song of the
nightingale; nothing but love in my mind quite thrilled by
shudders of delight.

God! could I be a swallow and sweep through the air, I would go
at midnight to her little chamber.

When I