eased mine eyes,
And, while I see it, ever will.
When a noble maiden, fair and pure,
With raiment rich and tresses deftly braided,
Mingles, for pleasure's sake, in company,
High bred, with eyes that, laughingly demure,
Glance round at times and make all else seem faded,
As, when the sun shines, all the stars must die.
Let May bud forth in all its splendour;
What sight so sweet can he engender
As with this picture to compare?
Unheeded leave we buds and blooms,
And gaze upon the lovely fair!

The grace in this rendering of a familiar motive, and the
individuality in the following _Complaint of Winter_, were both
unusual at the time:

Erewhile the world shone red and blue
And green in wood and upland too,
And birdlets sang on the bough.
But now it's grown grey and lost its glow,
And there's only the croak of the winter crow,
Whence--many a ruffled brow!

Elsewhere he says that his lady's favour turns his winter to spring,
and adds:

Cold winter 'twas no more for me,
Though others felt it bitterly;
To me it was mid May.

He has many pictures of Nature and pretty comparisons, but the
stereotyped style predominates--heath, flowers, grass, and
nightingales. The pearl of the collection is the naive song which
touches sensuous feeling, like the _Song of Solomon_, with the magic
light of innocence:

Under the lime on the heath where I sat with my love,
There you would find
The grass and the flowers all crushed--
Sweetly the nightingale sang in the vale by the wood.
Tandaradei!
When I came up to the meadow my lover was waiting me there.
Ah! what a greeting I had! Gracious Mary, 'tis bliss to me still!
Tandaradei! Did he kiss me, you ask? Look at the red of my lips!
Of sweet flowers of all sorts he made us a bed,
I wager who passes now smiles at the sight,
The roses would still show just where my head lay.
Tandaradei!
But how he caressed me, that any but one
Should know that, God forbid! I were shamed if they did;
Only he and I know it,
And one little birdie who never will tell.

So we see that interest in Nature in the literature of the Crusaders
very seldom went beyond the utilitarian bounds of pleasure and
admiration in fertility and pleasantness; and the German national
epics rarely alluded to her traits even by way of comparison. The
court epics shewed some advance, and sympathy was distinctly
traceable in Gottfried, and even attai