Gudrun, that epic of the people which deserves to stand near the more famous Niebelungen Lied, treats constantly of the ocean, yet never with any feeling except dread of shipwreck. This poem, however, shows a more northern tone in one or two descriptions of winter, that are at least elaborated. In the scene, for instance, when Herwig and Ortwin arrive at the shore where Hildeburg and Gudrun, almost naked, are washing the clothes for their cruel mistress, we find some realistic touches, such as their trembling before the March wind, in which their hair was streaming as they toiled on the beach, while before them the sea was full of cakes of ice
that had broken up under the early spring. In another connection, too, the poet compares something to a thick snowstorm, driven
by mountain winds. The sense of fitness in a sympathetic natural environment for the human action, that has been so generally
6
regarded in literature, as by Shakespeare, is indeed occasionally found in mediaeval poetry; so in an interesting French romance that relates the trials of a heroine who barely escapes with her life, after the[10] loss of everything dear: "The lady is in the wood and bitterly she wails. She hears the wolves howl, and the screech-owls cry; it lightens terribly, and the thunder is heavy, rain, hail, and wind--'tis wild for a lady all alone."
Exceptions occur now and then. Dante, for example, was impressed by the mountains; no readers of the Purgatory need to be reminded of his experience in climbing them. The setting for a mood of unrealized love in one of his lyrics is in winter, among the whitened hills: "He wooed the lady in a lovely grassy meadow, surrounded by lofty hills." But the arbitrary verbal repetitions of the sestina modify the original face of the image of the mountains towering about the lover's plain, and the pensive beauty of the whole poem may be connected with an allegory. But I believe that even in Dante we never catch the sense of exultation in the earth's power and majesty.
Our modern feeling for forests is not only at times sombre and oppressive; we also derive a sense of sublime composure from them. This latter sentiment was hardly shared by the mediaevals. Dante was only following earlier poets when he located the opening of
Hell by a gloomy wood, and his repeated metaphor of life as a forest, "confusing," "gloomy," and "dark," accords with the feeling of his age. He would not have appreciated Chateaubriand. He has left us, however, a rare and interesting reference to the sough-
ing in the pines on the Adriatic, which shows how well his ear could interpret its solemn beauty. The mystical apple-tree, moreover, near the close of the Purgatory, whose blossoms are so exquisitely defined, indirectly reminds us how exceptional is a mention of fruit trees in flower. Yet the Provencal, French, and German[11] lyrics constantly begin with the joyousness of spring, and the happy contrast from the season that destroys flowers and foliage. Nothing is more conventional than these nature preludes. Over and over, till we close our books impatiently, we hear reiterations of the charm of spring and summer. There is a slender kind of grace and sincerity that would lend interest to many of these, if they had come down by themselves; but they lie together in books in wearisome uniformity. A dandelion in April is much prettier than the dandelions in June. These preludes are usually in keeping with the love-phrases that follow, cold and imitative. For poets thought and felt in exterior generalities, rather than in detachment and inner consciousness. Their typical landscape may be seen in a passage from Gottfried von Strassburg,--one of Germany's most brilliant poets--where Tristan and Isolde have fled to the forest grotto, in fear of King Mark. The grotto is fitted up luxuriously, in keeping with the temper of the entire poem, but since it is in the wilderness, far away from roads or paths, in a description of its surroundings we might certainly look for a sense of the picturesque. But so far from caring for the wild and rugged, Gottfried does not even like a quiet woodland simplicity.
"Above the entrance stood three broad lindens, no more; but below, stretching down the slope, were innumerable trees that hid the retreat. On one side was a level stretch where a fountain flowed, a fresh, cool stream, clearer than the sun. Above it, too, stood three beautiful shady lindens that shielded the spring from rain and the sun. Bright blossoms and green grass struggled with each other sweetly on the field. One caught also the delightful songs of birds which sang more delightfully there than anywhere else. Eye and ear each had its pleasure, there was shade and sun, air and breezes soft and pleasing."
[12]
He goes on to describe the lovers, in a passage from which I translate the opening:
When they waked and when they slept, Side by side they ever kept.
In the morning o'er the dew Softly to the field they drew, Where, beside the little pool, Flowers and grass were dewy cool.
And the cool fields pleased them well,
Pleased them, too, their love to tell, Straying idly thro' the glade, Hearing music, as they strayed. Sweetly sang the birds, and then
In their walk they turned again Where the cool brook rippled by, Listening to the melody,
As it flowed and as it went:
Where across the field it bent, There they sat them down to hear, Resting there, its murmur clear.
7
And until the sunshine blazed, In the rivulet they gazed.
These lines are characteristic of Gottfried, even to the lingering verbal repetition, and the picture certainly is pretty, as is the whole account of the lovers' life that follows. Nothing in early German literature comes closer to refined modern sensuousness than Gottfried's best passages; there is a dreamy passion in them, and sometimes they flash. His rich voluptuous strain has more of the poet than the free-liver, and his general tone is curiously modern. It would be a showy phrase to call his Tristan the Don Juan of the middle ages, for the poems are very dissimilar, yet it is safe to say that we think of Byron as we read him. Contrast these representative poets of the thirteenth and nineteenth[13] centuries in this matter of their feeling for nature. For once among German settings we have a wild scene. But we observe how studiously it is modified into the conventional meadow, with trees in uniform little groups, a grassy field is sprinkled with flowers, there is a spring, and the little stream that escapes from it instead of tumbling down over a rocky bed into a glen, flows across the field. Gottfried mentions mountains and rocks that lie round about, only to point out that
they are types of the difficulties and perils to be undergone before reaching love's shrine. The almost inaccessible retreat was neces-
sary as a shelter for the fugitives from Mark's court; the poet has done his best to obliterate the reality. If we turn to Byron, and look for instance at that incomparable passage in which he relates the early love of Juan and Haidee, we observe where he voluntarily places his lovers:
"It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, With cliffs above and a broad sandy shore; Guarded by shoals and rocks as by a host,
With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore
A better welcome to the tempest-tost;
And rarely ceased the haughty billows' roar."
"And thus they wandered forth, and hand in hand, Over the shining pebbles and the shells,
Glided along the smooth and hardened sand, And in the worn and wild receptacles
Worked by the storms, yet worked as it were planned, In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,
They turned to rest; and each clasped by an arm, Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm."
And, to pass over the description of sky, sea, moon, and starlight, that follows, as elements in the nature-setting, notice the scene where Juan is sleeping:[14]
"The lady watched her lover, and that hour Of Love's, and Night's, and Ocean's