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when the sun sinks the valleys are covered with shadows, and soon only the highest peaks retain their radiance." Love became religion. The worship of Mary was closely associated with the homage paid to women, and all the Minnesingers have sung her praises. There was no irreverence in these chivalrous songs to the Virgin. She was the queen of the angels, to whom the knightly minstrels vowed allegiance. When Walther bade farewell to Dame World, whom he had served for forty years, he was preparing for his final resting-place :

"Too well thy weakness have I proved;

Now would I leave thee,- it is time:

Good-night to thee, O World, good-night!
I haste me to my home."

The enduring charm of Walther's verse is due in large measure to his genuineness and to the moral elevation of his character: he was good as well as great. His roguish humor wins; his simplicity moves; the greatness of his soul uplifts. The emotions which he stirs are those of our common humanity in all ages. Several of his best poems have been rendered accessible to the English reader by the unsurpassed versions of Edgar Taylor, from whom some of the above citations have been taken, and who rendered also the following poem, written by Walther upon revisiting the scenes of his youth:

AH! WHERE are hours departed fled?

Is life a dream, or true indeed?
Did all my heart hath fashionéd

From fancy's visitings proceed?
Yes, I have slept; and now unknown

To me the things best known before,-
The land, the people, once mine own,

Where are they? they are here no more;
My boyhood's friends all aged, worn,

Despoiled the woods, the fields, of home,
Only the streams flow on forlorn:

Alas, that e'er such change should come!
And he who knew me once so well

Salutes me now as one estranged;

The very earth to me can tell

Of naught but things perverted, changed:

And when I muse on other days,

That passed me as the dashing oars

The surface of the ocean raise,

Ceaseless my heart its fate deplores.

Walther died about 1230 in Würzburg, and there in the minster he lies buried. Longfellow has perpetuated the pretty legend concerning his grave. It is said to have been provided in his will that

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the birds from whom he learned his art should be fed daily at noon upon the slab which covers his resting-place.

"Thus the bard of love departed;

And fulfilling his desire,

On his tomb the birds were feasted

By the children of the choir."

By the side of Walther von der Vogelweide and the Minnesingers stood the epic poets Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue, and Gottfried von Strassburg. Wolfram, if we omit the qualifying adjective "lyric," must be called the greatest poet of the Middle Ages. Only seven of his lyrics have come down to us, but the tenderest ideals of love are expressed in the two epic songs from the 'Titurel' cycle. The full measure of his greatness is attained in the immortal 'Parzifal,' the finest courtly epic of German literature. It is not only a picture of the days of chivalry: it is the story of human life,its struggles, aspirations, conflicting temptations, defeats, and final triumph. In a psychological sense it is the 'Faust' of mediæval Germany; and it reaches the same solution,- self-renunciation. The whole poem, in its moral exaltation, is akin to Dante's. 'Parzifal' is the expression of the highest ethical ideals of Germany in the Middle. Ages; and the author's profound insight into the human heart shows him to have been the deepest thinker as he was the most powerful poet of his time. With Wolfram must be grouped Hartmann von Aue, because of the deep moral earnestness which both infused into their poetry. Wolfram planned his great work to fill the whole circle of religion and ethics; Hartmann was content with a few of its segments. The two epics 'Erec' and 'Iwein' do not rise above the commonplace level of the ordinary poetic tales of chivalry; but in the two shorter epic tales 'Gregorius' and 'Der Arme Heinrich › (Poor Henry), problems of the tortured human soul are treated with great simplicity and strength. For a sin unwittingly committed, Gregorius spends his life in severest penance, and receives at last the reward of his sincere atonement. 'Poor Henry' is the tale of a man of wealth and high position, who is suddenly stricken with a loathsome disease. Only the sacrifice of a young girl's life can save him; but from the devoted girl with whose parents he has taken refuge he nobly conceals this secret. She learns it finally, however, and this sacrifice appears to her in the light of a Divine mission: but at the last moment Henry refuses to accept salvation at such a price; his soul is cleansed of the last trace of selfishness, and at that moment he is restored to bodily health as well. Longfellow preserves this story for English readers in his poem The Golden Legend,' which forms the second part of 'Christus.'

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Of a very different order of mind from these two ethical poets was Gottfried, the Master of Strassburg. His 'Tristan und Isolde' is the perfection of art, without superior among the medieval courtly epics of Germany; but it deals solely with the overmastering passion of a guilty love, in which by reason of the magic potion the lovers are victims rather than sinners. There is no psychological problem, no ethical ideal, but there is a wealth of artistic culture and polished poetry. In Tristan we have the richest picture of German chivalry in its full flower that has been painted in literature. Gottfried was the most cultivated poet of his time, but he lacked the moral elevation of his rivals.

Of the host of the Minnesingers it is impossible to speak in detail. There is a mass of uncertain dates, picturesque, names, legendary anecdotes, and beautiful poems. The lyric poetry of that age of song is wonderfully rich, but the name of Walther von der Vogelweide may stand as the symbol of the whole. Even in the testimony of his contemporaries he occupies the highest place. Gottfried did him homage; Wolfram praised him in 'Parzifal,' and in Titurel' called him "the exalted master." Later poets looked up to him as their incomparable model; for Walther was fertile in the invention of elaborate and exquisitely musical measures. Some eighty new metres were original with him, from the simplest folk-song to the most majestic verse. A gradual process of petrifaction began when inspiration failed, and the traditions descended to lesser men. Thus rules came to be established, and the form was reverenced whence the soul had fled. This is doubtless the historic connection between the wooden age of the Mastersingers and Walther's age of gold. The descent had begun even in the time of Walther, who deplored the peasant realism of his contemporary Nithart, whose so-called 'Nitharte' represented the triumph of vulgarity over the courtly. But the descent was not precipitate, for there are still exquisite specimens of the minnesang in the early fourteenth century; as for instance, the poem "I saw yon infant in her arms carest" of the Zürich poet Hadloub. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the courtly vanished before the vulgar; and it required all the indefatigable industry of the sound-hearted Hans Sachs to rescue German literature from hopeless coarseness. Walther's name was still honored as a tradition, but it was only a name; - then darkness fell and that too was forgotten. The story of his rehabilitation is the same as that which relates the recovery of the Nibelungenlied. Bodmer turned the attention of Germans to their ancient poets; slowly the interest grew; at last the pioneers of German philology and the Romantic poets, especially Tieck,- who in 1803 published his edition of the Minnelieder, -restored the bards of the thirteenth century to their rightful place among the greatest singers of German song. And

to-day every lover of pure lyric verse will echo with equal sincerity the sentiment of Walther's younger contemporary, Hugo von Trimberg, when he enthusiastically exclaims:

"Her Walther von der Vogelweide,

Swer des vergaez', der taet' mir leide.»

(Sir Walther von der Vogelweide, I'd be sorry for any one that could forget him.)

Chart Grung

SONG OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE

HEN from the sod the flowerets spring,

WHEN

And smile to meet the sun's bright ray,
When birds their sweetest carols sing,
In all the morning pride of May,
What lovelier than the prospect there?
Can earth boast anything more fair?
To me it seems an almost heaven,

So beauteous to my eyes that vision bright is given.

But when a lady chaste and fair,
Noble, and clad in rich attire,

Walks through the throng with gracious air,
As sun that bids the stars retire,-
Then where are all thy boastings, May?

What hast thou beautiful and gay,

Compared with that supreme delight?

We leave thy loveliest flowers, and watch that lady bright.

Wouldst thou believe me,- come and place

Before thee all this pride of May,

Then look but on my lady's face,

And which is best and brightest say.

For me, how soon (if choice were mine)

This would I take, and that resign;

And say, "Though sweet thy beauties, May,
I'd rather forfeit all than lose my lady gay!"

Translation of Edgar Taylor.

A

LAMENT OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE

H ME! whither have vanished the years of age and youth?
Has life been but a dream, then, or was it all a truth?

And was that really somewhat which I have lived and
thought?

Surely I must have slumbered, although I knew it not.
And now that I'm awakened, I not a whit recall

That once I was acquainted amongst these people all:

The country and the people 'mongst whom my life passed by
Have grown to be estrangèd, as if 'twere all a lie.

They who were once my playmates are weary now and cold;
The prairies have been broken, the woods cut down and sold.
If yonder river flowed not e'en as it once did flow,

I do believe my sorrow would, growing, lay me low.

Me greet with hesitation many who knew me well:

This wretched world is everywhere a dark, ungrateful hell; And then I think of many days of ecstasy and joy,

That now e'en as a stroke on the sea have gone forever by —
Forever, forevermore, ah me!

Ah me, how sad and care worn our young men now appear!
The men who never sorrow in their fresh minds did wear
Do nothing now but weary – Ah me! how can it be?
Wherever in the world I turn, no one seems glad to me.

Dancing, laughing, singing, grief has driven away;
Christian man saw never a world so sombre aye:
Look now how our women walk with strange headgear,
And how our knights and nobles in clownish dress appear.

Letters sharp reproving from Rome have come our way:
To mourn we have permission; we must no more be gay.
It grieves me to my heart's core- we once did live so grand -
That now from cheerful laughter to weeping I must bend.

The wild birds of the forest sadden at our complaint,
Is't wonder if I also despair and grow more faint?

-

But what- O wretched me! have I been led to scoff?
Who follows earthly happiness, from heaven's bliss turneth off
Forevermore, ah me!

Ah me, how we are poisoned with the sweetness of the world!
I see the bitter gall amidst the sweetest honey curled.
The world is outward beautiful, white, and green, and red,
But inward, oh! a sombre black, gloomy, aye, and dead.

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