s the Carlovingian
Renaissance never reached; they are mediaeval in form, but full of a
frank enjoyment of life and its pleasures, which hardly any
northerner of that day possessed. Often enough this degenerated into
frivolity; but the stir of national awakening after the long sleep of
the Middle Ages is felt like a spring breeze through them all.

It is a far cry from the view of Nature we saw in the Carlovingian
monks, to these highly-coloured verses. The dim light of churches and
bare cell walls may have doubled the monks' appreciation of blue
skies and open-air life; but they were fettered by the constant fight
with the senses; Nature to them must needs be less a work of God for
man's delight, than a dangerous means of seduction. 'They wandered
through Nature with timid misgiving, and their anxious fantasy
depicted forms of terror or marvellous rescues.[3] The idyllic
pleasure in the simple charms of Nature, especially in the monastery
garden of the Carlovingian time, contrasts strikingly with the tone
of these very mundane _vagantes clerici_, for whom Nature had not
only long been absorbed and freed from all demoniac influence, but
peopled by the charming forms of the old mythic poems, and made for
the joy and profit of men, in the widest and naivest sense of the
words.

Spring songs, as with the Minnesingers, take up most of the space;
but the theme is treated with greater variety. Enjoyment of life and
Nature breathes through them all.

One runs thus:

Spring cometh, and the earth is decked and studded with vernal
flowers. The harmony of the birds' returning song rouses the
heart to be glad. It is the time of joy.

Songs 98 to 118 rejoice that winter is gone; for instance:

Now in the mild springtime Flora opens the lap which the cold
frost had locked in cruel time of winter; the zephyr with gentle
murmur cometh with the spring; the grove is clad in leaves. The
nightingale is singing, the fields are gay with divers hues. It
is sweet to walk in the wooded glens, it is sweeter to pluck the
lily with the rose, it is sweetest of all to sport with a lovely
maiden.

Another makes a similar confession, for Nature and amorous passion
are the two strings of these lyres:

Beneath the pleasant foliage of a tree 'tis sweet to rest, while
the nightingale sings her plaintive song; sweeter still, to sport
in the grass with a fair maiden.... O, to what changeful mood