It grieves me to my heart's core — we once did live so grand –
That now from cheerful laughter to weeping I must bend.
That now from cheerful laughter to weeping I must bend.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 - Tur to Wat
He was thus not only the
chief literary figure of his time, but he became
also an important political force.
In him too,
as in his great contemporaries Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue, the deep
religious spirit of the age found expression.
Gottfried von Strassburg pictured the courtly
graces, the manly accomplishments, and the
extravagant ideals, of chivalry at its height.
These men, with the legion of lesser Minne-
WALTHER
singers, shed radiance upon the reign of the
greatest of medieval emperors, Frederick II. ;
than whom no more enlightened prince had sat upon a European
throne since the days of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. Over
all that wonderful age lies the fairy charm of poetry and romance.
The court of Frederick recalls the fabled glories of the emperors of
Trebizond; it shines through the mists of nearly seven centuries like
an imperial city gleaming in a golden atmosphere. With the brave,
bold, broad-minded characteristics of the Hohenstaufen house, Fred-
erick united the rarest natural gifts, – learning, wisdom, foresight, and
a passionate love of art and science. According to the picture that
Raumer draws of him in the History of the Hohenstaufen,' he was
a warrior and statesman, a poet and a naturalist, and a protector
of learning and the fine arts. He mastered the languages of the six
dominions that were united under his imperial sway: Greek, Latin,
## p. 15581 (#535) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15581
Italian, German, French, and Arabic. He promulgated the Sicilian
Constitutions,- a book of laws far in advance of his times. He col-
lected a vast library in many languages, and on the greatest variety
of subjects. He made Greek works more accessible by having them
translated into the vernacular. Copies were sent to the University
of Bologna, although that institution stood in political opposition to
him. In 1224 he founded the University of Naples, and many stu-
dents were assisted from his own private purse.
After his coronation in 1215 he attached to himself Nicolà da
Pisano, who was the first to shake off the conventionality of Byzan-
tine art. Through neglect or destruction the imperial art collections
have been lost; but the beautiful coins of Frederick's reign, and the
splendid remains of palaces and castles, testify to the inspiring inter-
est that the Emperor took in the arts. The bridge at Capua with its
tower he designed himself. Mural paintings adorned at least one of
his castles, — that of Foggia,- and the mosaics of Palermo we owe
in a sense to him. It was he that gave an impulse to the study of
natural history by founding a zoological garden, which, through his
relations with Oriental princes, he was able to stock with exotic ani-
mals; and he caused a translation to be made of Aristotle's work on
zoology. He himself wrote a book on falconry, which has intrinsic
value aside from the interest which attaches to its age and origin.
And since he was a poet and wrote love lyrics, singers and poets
were gathered at his romantic court. His sympathies were, it is true,
far more Italian than German: his efforts in behalf of the Italian
tongue were soon to be crowned by the immortal work of Dante; but
he was liberal-minded enough to treat the German language in the
same way. Germany, to be sure, already had a literature, but the
indifference of such a man as Frederick could have done much to
check its development. The first State document in German, how-
ever, was issued by him when the Peace of Mayence was proclaimed
in 1235. In this care for the popular languages of his dominions he
resembled his great predecessors, Charlemagne and Alfred. He made
himself the centre of intellectual activity throughout his broad realm.
It was this age also that saw the rise of the great Dominican and
Franciscan orders, and of the Order of Mendicant Friars; it witnessed
the career of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At the north the court of
the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia became a rallying-point for min-
strelsy and song; the historic contest of the singers on the Wartburg
is a poetic memorial of those romantic days. Much that is best
in our traditional romance had its rise then. From the time of the
migrations down, rugged men of action had been making history
which the poetic mind of the people transmitted into legend, until in
this more cultivated age that vast fund of history and legend received
its artistic form from the shaping genius of the great poets.
## p. 15582 (#536) ##########################################
15582
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
It was in the twelfth century that the Nibelungenlied was put
into the strophes in which we read it. The crusade of Frederick
Barbarossa in 1189 gave a powerful impulse to the intellectual activity
of Germany. Contact with the Orient had introduced greater luxury
and a higher refinement into the arts of living. The barbarian hordes
which had overthrown the Roman empire had now taken their place
among the leaders of European civilization. This was the long mis-
understood and misrepresented thirteenth century, whose glories were
soon transfigured in legend, obscured by the rise of democracy, and
at last forgotten utterly in the wars of the seventeenth century.
Honest ignorance, and the zeal of bigotry, finally succeeded in fasten-
ing upon it the name of the Dark Ages! The darkness lay elsewhere;
for although we look back upon those dazzling days through the
beautifying medium of many centuries, which shows them stripped of
their sordidness and sorrow, it is certain that the early thirteenth
century was the most brilliant period in German literary history
until Goethe took up the Minnesingers' lyre, and evoked new har-
monies at the old Thuringian court.
It was of an age such as this that Walther von der Vogelweide
was the chief literary figure and a great political force. The rapid
development of chivalry during the crusades had brought with it the
Minnedienst, — the service and homage paid to women. Love and war
were the essence of life, and both were the inspiration of song. The
conception of love was deepened, idealized, refined. Love became an
ennobling and purifying influence. It is the chivalrous homage of
a vassal for a queen to whom he devotes his service and his life, -
a conception unknown in the ruder days when Siegfried conquered
Brünnhilde, and men won women sword in hand. In the expression
homage there was often much euphuistic exaggeration, which
weakened the directness of its appeal; but in Walther von der Vogel-
weide the note is always genuine, true, convincing. One of the
earliest examples of supersensual love in European literature is in
Walther's lines:-
«Would you know what may be the eyne
Wherewith I can see her whate'er befalls ?
They are the thoughts of this heart of mine;
Therewith I can see her through castle walls. )
Walther's poems not only reveal the character of the man, but
they tell the story of his life. They do not, however, give us the date
or place of his birth. He was probably born in the Tyrol in 1170.
At Bozen, on the borderlands between the German and Italian do-
minions of the Hohenstaufen emperors, Walther's heroic statue stands.
His earliest song of which the date is known belongs to the year
1198, and already shows the mature artist. For forty years, he says,
## p. 15583 (#537) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15583
>
he sang of love: it is no wonder, then, that in the end his love lyrics
lost some of the red blood of youth. The year 1198 marked an epoch
in his life. He had been attached to the Austrian court of the Baben-
bergers, and it was in Austria that he had learned “to sing and to
say. ” In 1197 the Emperor Henry VI. died, when his son, afterwards
Frederick II. , was but three years old. The political confusion
reached its highest point. Walther seems to have become for a time
a wandering minstrel, as did Wolfram also. The former sided with
Philip of Suabia, brother of Henry, and sang at his coronation; the
latter took the part of the rival King Otto. Philip triumphed; and at
the court of Hermann of Thuringia, who had submitted to Philip,
Walther was welcomed. It was there that he met Wolfram von
Eschenbach. That was a picturesque moment in the annals of Ger-
man literature, when the two greatest poets of the age came together
within the borders of that illustrious little principality, where nearly
seven hundred years later Goethe met his only rival and won his
friendship. From the inexhaustible youthfulness of Walther, Wolfram
derived his inspiration to finish the immortal Parzifal”; and to Wal-
ther, Wolfram seems to have imparted some of his ethical earnestness
and deep religious fervor. The contest on the Wartburg took place,
according to tradition, in 1207. Two years later there came a change
over the political face of Europe. Frederick II. , having attained his
fifteenth year, asserted his claim to his father's crown. He appeared
at Coire, and made a triumphant progress down the Rhine. Hermann
joined him, and Walther hailed him in a burst of lyric joy. And the
homeless singer had a personal end in view. This is his pathetic and
naïve petition : -
Fain, could it be, would I a home obtain,
And warm me by a hearth-side of my own.
Then, then, I'd sing about the sweet birds' strain,
And fields and flowers, as I have whilome done;
And paint in song the lily and the rose
That dwell upon her cheek who smiles on me.
But lone I stray — no home its comfort shows:
Ah, luckless man! still doomed a guest to be!
»
Frederick fulfilled his wish; and the poet broke out into the well-
known song of jubilation, I have my grant! I have my grant! ”
But he was never directly attached to the person of Frederick: he
returned to the liberal court of Leopold VII. , the Glorious, at Vienna,
and again sang a mendicant minstrel's song :-
<< To me is barred the door of joy and ease:
There stand I as an orphan, lone, forlorn,
And nothing boots me that I frequent knock.
## p. 15584 (#538) ##########################################
15584
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Strange that on every hand the shower should fall,
And not one cheering drop should reach to me!
On all around the generous Austrian's gifts,
Gladdening the land, like genial rain descend.
A fair and gay adornéd mead is he,
Whereon are gathered oft the sweetest flowers:
Would that his rich and ever generous hand
Might stoop to pick one little leaf for me,
So might I fitly praise a scene so fair. »
And when the great poets begged in song, the princes granted.
Walther fared sumptuously at Vienna, honored among the noblest of
the land.
Walther von der Vogelweide was the first patriot poet of Ger-
man literature. The essential inner unity of the empire he perceived
more clearly than perhaps any other man of his time. It was the
consciousness of this national homogeneity that gave bitterness to his
attacks upon the papacy. He resented foreign interference. The
popes had always found it hard to hold this sturdy independent race
in check; and now, when the papal power was at its height, the lead-
ing spirits of Germany were in open revolt against the exactions
of Rome. All the great achievements of Frederick II. were accom-
plished in spite of the ban of excommunication. Walther, like Dante
a few years later, was a stanch upholder of the empire; and neither
Hutten, nor Sachs, nor Luther, was more vigorous in denunciations
of Roman abuses than Walther the Minnesinger. In Walther's time
it was emperor and people against the pope; in Luther's it was
the people against emperor and pope: which marks the democratic
change already begun in the thirteenth century. Walther inveighed
as vigorously against the sectional strife of the German princes, and
deplored the effect upon the fatherland in lines of thrilling patriotic
fervor.
The great world-events in Walther's later life were the struggle
between Frederick II. and the popes Innocent III. and Gregory IX. ,
and the crusade which culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem. The
Pope had excommunicated the Emperor for failing to keep his vow
to institute a crusade, and Walther was outspoken in his urgency
that this vow should be fulfilled. He was ever faithful to Frederick;
but these doughty German singers were frank and bold for the thing
that they thought right. There is a crusader's song of Walther's
which would, taken literally, indicate that he had himself gone to the
Holy Land. Probably however he did not. As the poet grew old
his interest in purely worldly things decreased. His religious nature
.
asserted itself, and some of his loftiest poems strike a profoundly
devotional note. In Uhland's fine figure: «The earthly vanishes, -as
## p. 15585 (#539) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15585
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 Aed ?
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 concern-
ing his grave. It is said to have been provided in his will that
• XXVI–975
## p. 15586 (#540) ##########################################
15586
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
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, Gre-
gorius 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 loath-
some disease. Only the sacrifice of a young girl's life can
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. '
save
## p. 15587 (#541) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15587
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 eleva-
tion 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 Vogel-
weide 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 inspi-
ration 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 Ni-
tharte represented the triumph of vulgarity over the courtly. But
the descent was not precipitate, for there are still exquisite speci-
mens 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 inde-
fatigable industry of the sound-hearted Hans Sachs to rescue German
literature from hopeless coarseness. Walther's name was still hon-
ored 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
## p. 15588 (#542) ##########################################
15588
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
to-day every lover of pure lyric verse will echo with equal sincerity
the sentiment of Walther's younger contemporary, Hugo von Trim-
berg, 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 for-
get him. )
C
Chart Bruing
SONG OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
WHEN
HEN from the sod the flowerets spring,
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.
(
## p. 15589 (#543) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15589
LAMENT OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
A"
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 estranged, 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 careworn 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 ( 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.
## p. 15590 (#544) ##########################################
15590
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Yet now to who have listened a comfort I will show:
Even a gentle penance forgiveness shall bestow.
Remember this, O knightly lords, 'tis yours to do and seal;
You bear the glittering helmets and breastplates of strong steel,
Moreo'er the shields so steady and the consecrated swords:
O God, that I were worthy to join the victor lords !
Then should I like the others achieve a prize untold, -
Not lands that have been promised, nor king's or nobles' gold,
But oh, a wondrous crown, and forevermore to wear
A crown which poorest soldier can win with axe or spear.
Yea, if the noble crusade I might follow o'er the sea,
I evermore should sing, All's well! and nevermore, Ah me!
Nevermore, Ah me!
Translation of A. E. Kroeger.
SONG OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH
WOULD
OULD I the lofty spirit melt
Of that proud dame who dwells so high,
Kind Heaven must aid me, or unfelt
By her will be its agony.
Joy in my soul no place can find:
As well might I a suitor be
To thunderbolts, as hope her mind
Will turn in softer mood to me.
Those cheeks are beautiful, are bright
As the red rose with dewdrops graced;
And faultless is the lovely light
Of those dear eyes, that, on me placed,
Pierce to my very heart, and fill
My soul with love's consuming fires,
While passion burns and reigns at will, -
So deep the love that fair inspires!
But joy upon her beauteous form
Attends, her hues so bright to shed
O'er those red lips, before whose warm
And beaming smile all care is fled.
She is to me all light and joy;
I faint, I die, before her frown:
Even Venus, lived she yet on earth,
A fairer goddess here must own.
## p. 15591 (#545) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15591
While many mourn the vanished light
Of summer, and the sweet sun's face,
I mourn that these, however bright,
No anguish from the soul can chase
By love inflicted: all around
Nor song of birds, nor ladies' bloom,
Nor flowers upspringing from the ground,
Can chase or cheer the spirit's gloom.
Yet still thine aid, beloved, impart;
Of all thy power, thy love, make trial;
Bid joy revive in this sad heart,-
Joy that expires at thy denial:
Well may I pour my prayer to thee,
Belovèd lady, since 'tis thine
Alone to send such care on me;
Alone for thee I ceaseless pine.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
BLANCHEFLEUR AT THE TOURNAMENT
From (Tristan and Isolde) of Gottfried von Strassburg
A
T TINTAJOEL 'twas, on the plain
Where the guests met again;
In the loveliest glen
Ever beheld by eyes of men
In the first freshness of that clime.
The gentle, gracious summer-time
Had by the sweet Creator's hand
With sweet care been poured on the land.
Of little wood birdlets bright,
That to ears should ever give delight,
Of grass, flowers, leaves, and blossoms high,
Of all that happy makes the eye
Or noble heart delight may gain,
Was full the glorious summer plain.
Whatever there you wished to find,
Spring had kindly borne in mind, -
The sunshine by the shadow,
The linden on the meadow.
The gentle, pleasant breezes,
With cunning, sweet caresses,
## p. 15592 (#546) ##########################################
15592
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
O'er all the guests did lightly sweep.
The brilliant flowers did brightly peep
From dewy grass and shadow.
May's friend, the fresh green meadow,
Had from the flowers that he had reared
A summer robe so bright prepared,
Each guest its glow detected
From eye and mien reflected.
The sweet tree blossom looked at you
With a smile so sweet and true,
That all your heart and all your mind
Again to the laughing bloom inclined;
With eyes playfully burning,
Its loving laugh returning.
The gentle bird-ditty,
So lovely, so pretty,
That stirs every feeling,
O'er ears and minds stealing,
Rang from each bush of the summer vale.
The blessed nightingale,
The dearest, sweetest bird on tree,
That ever blessed ought to be,
It sang in the coolness,
With such heartfulness,
That to every noble heart
The sound did joy and glow impart.
And now the whole company,
Full of mirth and in high glee,
Had settled down upon the lawn.
There did every one
As his notion or pleasure bent,
And put up or arranged his tent.
The wealthy were quartered wealthily,
The courtly incomparably;
Some under silk did rest,
Others on the heath gay-drest;
To many the linden gave shadow,
Others housed on the meadow,
Under leaf-green twigs demurely.
Nor guests nor servants, surely,
Rarely were pleasanter
Quartered than they were quartered here.
Plenty was gathered of the best,
Which needful is for mirthful feast,
## p. 15593 (#547) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15593
In way of clothing and eating;
Each his own wants meeting,
From home had brought provender.
King Mark, with regal splendor,
Moreover had provided for them.
Thus they enjoyed in bliss supreme
The gracious time of early spring;
Thus joy the feast to all did bring.
All that ever a curious man
To behold had longed, he then
There could have seen certainly.
One saw there what one liked to see:
Those eyed the pretty women,
These watched the peddling showmen;
Those looked at the dancing,
These at the jousting and lancing.
All that ever heart longed for
Was found there in sufficient store;
And all who were present,
Of joy-ripe years, pleasant
Effort made each to exceed
At every feast in mirthful deed;
And King Mark the good,
The courteous and high of mood,
Not only on this festivity
Had spent his wealth lavishly,
But here did he show men
A wonder of all women,
His sister Blanchefleur,-
A maid more beautiful than e'er
A woman upon earth was seen.
Of her beauty one must say, e'en,
That no living man could gaze
Intently on her glorious face,
But he would higher rank and find
Women and virtue in his mind.
The blessed eye-pleasure
O'er that wide inclosure
Gladdened all of young, fresh blood,
All noble hearts of courteous mood;
And on the lawn could have been seen
Many pretty women then,
## p. 15594 (#548) ##########################################
15594
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Of whom each by her beauty
Should have been queen in duty.
Whoe'er had seen them surely would
Have drawn from such sight fresh bold mood.
Many hearts grew rich with joy.
Now began the great tourney
Of the servants and of the guests.
The boldest and the best
Up and down the track now paced.
Noble Mark ahead e'er raced
With his fellow Riwalin,
Whose knights following close and keen
Their play to guide ever
Did nobly endeavor
In their master's glory,
For future song and story.
Many a horse, in overdress
Of cloth or half silk, in the race
Was seen on the meadow clover;
Many a snow-white cover
There shone, or red, brown, green, or blue;
Others again, for show, wore too
Robes with noble silk worked nice,
Or scalloped in many a quaint device,
Parted, striped, or braided,
Or with trimmings shaded.
Gayly, too, appeared there
Knights of handsome form and fair,
Their armor slit, as if cut to pieces.
Even Spring with its balmy breezes,
King Mark its high favor showed;
For many people in the crowd
Were crowned with wreaths of flowers wrought,
Which, as his offering, Spring had brought.
In such glorious, blessed May,
Began the blessed tourney.
Oft intermixed, the double troop
Rode up this grade, rode down that slope.
This carried they on so long that day,
Till downward swept the glorious play
To where Blanchefleur sat, the sweet,
Whom I as wonder greet,
With pretty women at her side,
To watch the show and the gallant ride :
## p. 15595 (#549) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15595
And how they rode so nobly all,
With carriage imperial,
That many an eye with pleasure lit.
But whatsoever others did,
Still 'twas the courtly Riwalin -
As 'twas, indeed, meet to have been -
Who before all the knighthood rare
Best showed his knightly power there.
The women, too, him notice showed,
And whispered that, in all the crowd,
No one on horse appearing
Rode with such gallant bearing.
They praised that which in him was shown.
« See! ” said they,— see! this youth fine-grown,
This man, is truly glorious!
How gloriously sits all he does,
Sit all movements of his bearing!
How his body is fair-appearing!
How joins with equal grace on him
Each imperial limb!
How evenly his shield is moved !
As if fast-glued, it floats aloft!
How doth the shaft his hand befit!
How well his robes upon him sit!
How stands his head! how glows his hair!
Sweet his behavior he doth wear;
Glorified is his body all!
Ah, happy is the woman who shall
Her bliss owe his sweet body. ”
Well pondered this in study
Blanchefleur, the blessed maid;
In her secret heart she had,
Above all knights, addressed to him
Her pleasant thoughts, her wond'rings dim.
She had him in her heart enshrined,
He had around her soul him twined;
He bore upon high throne
The sceptre and the crown
In the kingdom of her heart,
Although the secret she did guard,
And from the world keep, as was fit,
That no one e'er suspected it.
Translation of A. E. Kroeger.
## p. 15596 (#550) ##########################################
15596
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF HEINRICH VON VELDECHE
N°
O THANKS to Tristan that his heart had been
Faithful and true unto his queen;
For thereto did a potion move
More than the power of love:
Sweet thought to me,
That ne'er such cup my lips have prest;
Yet deeper love than ever he
Conceived, dwells in my breast:
So may it be!
So constant may it rest!
Call me but thine
As thou art mine!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN
M
Y LADY dearly loves a pretty bird,
That sings and echoes back her gentle tone;
Were I, too, near her, never should be heard
A songster's note more pleasant than my own,-
Sweeter than sweetest nightingale I'd sing.
For thee, my lady fair,
This yoke of love I bear:
Deign thou to comfort me, and ease my sorrowing.
Were but the troubles of my heart by her
Regarded, I would triumph in my pain;
But her proud heart stands firmly, and the stir
Of passionate grief o'ercomes not her disdain.
Yet, yet I do remember how before
My eyes she stood and spoke,
And on her gentle look
My earnest gaze was fixed: oh, were it so once more!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15597 (#551) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15597
SONG OF HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN
M
INE is the fortune of a simple child,
That in the glass his image looks upon;
And by the shadow of himself beguiled
Breaks quick the brittle charm, and joy is gone.
So gazed I- and I deemed my joy would last-
On the bright image of my lady fair :
But ah! the dream of my delight is past,
And love and rapture yield to dark despair.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF COUNT KRAFT VON TOGGENBURG
DºF
OES any one seek the soul of mirth,
Let him hie to the greenwood tree,
And there beneath the verdant shade,
The bloom of the summer see;
For there sing the birds right merrily,
And there will the bounding heart upspring
To the lofty clouds on joyful wing.
On the hedge-rows spring a thousand flowers,
And he from whose heart sweet May
Hath banished care, finds many a joy:
And I too would be gay,
Were the load of pining care away;
Were my lady kind, my soul were light,
Joy crowning joy would raise its flight.
.
The Aowers, leaves, hills, the vale, and mead,
And May with all its light,
Compared with the roses are pale indeed,
Which my lady bears; and bright
My eyes will shine as they meet my sight -
Those beautiful lips of rosy hue,
As red as the rose just steeped in dew.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15598 (#552) ##########################################
15598
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF STEINMAR
·W""
Tith the graceful corn upspringing,
With the birds around me singing,
With the leaf-crowned forests waving,
Sweet May-dews the herbage laving,
With the flowers that round me bloom,
To my lady dear I'll come:
All things beautiful and bright,
Sweet sound and fair to sight -
Nothing, nothing is too rare
For my beauteous lady fair;
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
She is one in whom I find
All things fair and bright combined.
When her beauteous form I see,
Kings themselves might envy me;
Joy with joy is gilded o'er,
Till the heart can hold no more.
She is bright as morning sun,
She my fairest, loveliest one:
For the honor of the fair,
I will sing her beauty rare;
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
Solace me, then, sweetest ! - be
Such in heart as I to thee;
Ope thy beauteous lips of love,
Call me thine, and then above
Merrily, merrily I will sail
With the light clouds on the gale.
Dear one, deign my heart to bless!
Steer me on to happiness!
Thou, in whom my soul confideth,
Thou, whose love my spirit guideth!
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15599 (#553) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15599
SONG OF THE MARNER »
M**
ARIA! Virgin! mother! comforter
Of sinners! queen of saints in heaven that are!
Thy beauty round the eternal throne doth cast
A brightness that outshines its living rays;
There in the fullness of transcendent joy
Heaven's King and thou sit in bright majesty:
Would I were there, a welcomed guest at last
Where angel tongues re-echo praise to praise!
There Michael sings the blessed Savior's name,
Till round the eternal throne it rings once more,
And angels in their choirs with glad acclaim,
Triumphant host, their joyful praises pour;
There thousand years than days more short appear,
Such joy from God doth flow and from that mother dear.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
ABSENCE
(ANONYMOUS)
I
F I a small bird were,
And little wings might bear,
I'd fly to thee;
But vain those wishes are:
Here, then, my rest shall be.
When far from thee I bide,
In dreams still at thy side
I've talked with thee;
And when I woke, I sighed,
Myself alone to see.
No hour of wakeful night
But teems with thoughts of light, -
Sweet thoughts of thee,-
As when, in hours more bright,
Thou gav'st thy heart to me.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15600 (#554) ##########################################
15600
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF CONRAD VON WÜRZBURG
SEE
EE how from the meadows pass
Brilliant flowers and verdant grass;
All their hues now they lose: o'er them hung,
Mournful robes the woods invest,
Late with leafy honors drest.
Yesterday the roses gay blooming sprung,
Beauteously the fields adorning;
Now their sallow branches fail :
Wild her tuneful notes at morning
Sung the lovely nightingale;
Now in woe, mournful, low, is her song.
Nor for lily nor rose sighs he,
Nor for birds' sweet harmony,
He to whom winter's gloom brings delight:
Seated by his leman dear,
He forgets the altered year;
Sweetly glide at eventide the moments bright.
Better this than culling posies:
For his lady's love he deems
Sweeter than the sweetest roses;
Little he the swain esteems
Not possessing that best blessing - love's delight.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF JOHANN HADLOUB
F1
Ar as I journey from my lady fair,
I have a messenger who quickly goes,
Morning, and noon, and at the evening's close:
Where'er she wanders, he pursues her there.
A restless, faithful, secret messenger
Well may he be, who, from my heart of hearts,
Charged with love's deepest secrets, thus departs,
And wings his way to her!
'Tis every thought I form that doth pursue
Thee, lady fair!
Ah! would that there
My wearied self had leave to follow too!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15601 (#555) ##########################################
15601
IZAAK WALTON
(1593–1683)
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
>>
a
OF THE life of Master Izaak Walton, angler, author, and linen-
draper, but little is known, and all to his credit. In a life
so sparingly diversified with events, the biographer is di-
vided in his mind between regret that the material for narration is
so small, and gratitude that the picture of a good man's character
and peaceful occupation stands out so clear
and untroubled.
Izaak Walton was born at the town of
Stafford, in the English county of the same
name, in August 1593. Of his education
he speaks with becoming modesty: and it
is probable that it was slight, for at the
age of nineteen years he was engaged in
• retail trade in London. His first shop was
in the Royal Burse, Cornhill, and was only
seven and a half feet long by five feet
wide. ” But he seems to have done
good business at this humble stand; for in
1624 he had a la shop in Fleet Street,
IZAAK Walton
and in 1632 he bought a lease of a house
and shop in Chancery Lane, where his occupation is described as that
of a “sempster” or “milliner. ”
It is certain that he did not live for his trade, though he lived by
it; for as early as 1619 we find a book of verse, The Love of Amos
and Laura,' dedicated to him as a person of acknowledged taste
and skill in letters. The friendships which he formed with Dr. John
Donne the metaphysical preacher and poet, with Sir Henry Wot-
ton the witty and honest ambassador, with the learned John Hales
of Eton College, and with many other persons of like ability and
distinction, prove him to have been a man of singular intelligence,
amiable character, and engaging conversation. In some of these friend-
ships, no doubt, the love of angling — to which recreation he was
attached by a pure and temperate and enduring passion — was either
the occasion of intimacy or the promoter of it. For it has often
been observed that this gentle sport inclines the hearts of those that
XXVI–976
-
-
## p. 15602 (#556) ##########################################
15602
IZAAK WALTON
as
a
»
practice it to friendliness; and there are no closer or more lasting
companionships than such as are formed beside flowing streams by
men who study to be quiet and go a-fishing. ” And this Walton did,
as we know from his own testimony. He turned from the hooks and
eyes of his shop to cast the hook for the nimble trout or the slug-
gish chub, in the waters of the Lea, or of the New River, with such
cheerful comrades as honest Nat. and R. Roe; “but they are gone,”
he adds, “and with them most of my pleasant hours, even
shadow that passeth away and returns not. ”
In 1626 he married Rachel Floud, a great-great-niece of Arch-
bishop Cranmer. She died in 1640, leaving a child who survived her
but two years.
In 1643, about the beginning of the Civil War,— which he deplored
and reprobated with as much bitterness as was possible to a man of
his gentle disposition,- he retired from business with a modest for-
tune, and purchased a small estate near his native town, in the heart
of rural England and in the neighborhood of good fishing. Here he
lived in peace and quietness, passing much of his time as a welcome
visitor in the families of eminent clergymen; "of whom,” says the
gossipy old chronicler Anthony Wood, «he was much beloved. ”
About 1646 he married again; the bride being a lady of discreet
age, — not less than thirty-five years,- and a stepsister of Thomas
Ken, who afterwards became the beloved Bishop of Bath and Wells,
and the honored author of the Evening Hymn,' with many other
pieces of sacred poetry. This is the lady who is spoken of so pleas-
antly as “Kenna” in “The Angler's Wish,' Walton's best poem. She
died in 1662, leaving two children: a son, Izaak Walton Jr. , who
lived a useful, tranquil life and died unmarried; and a daughter who
became the wife of the Rev. Dr. William Hawkins, a prebendary in
the Church of Winchester, in whose house Walton died.
With such close and constant associations among the clergy, it
was but natural that Walton's first essay in literature should have an
ecclesiastical flavor. . It was "The Life of Dr. John Donne,' prefixed
to the sermons of that noted divine and difficult poet, — which were
published in 1640, while Walton was still keeping shop in London.
The brief biography was a very remarkable piece of work for an
untried author; and gave evidence of a hand that, however it may
have acquired its skill, was able to modulate the harmonies of English
prose, with a rare and gentle charm, to a familiar tune,— the praise
of piety and benevolence and humbleness,- and yet with such fresh
and simple turns of humor and tenderness as delight the heart while
they satisfy the judgment.
Walton speaks, in the preface to this ‘Life,' of his “artless pencil. ”
But in truth it was the ars celare artem that belonged to him. His
## p. 15603 (#557) ##########################################
IZAAK WALTON
15603
writing shows that final and admirable simplicity which is always
the result of patient toil and the delicate, loving choice of words.
When, for example, he speaks of Master Donne as proceeding in a
certain search « with all moderate haste," or of his behavior (which,
when it would entice, had a strange kind of elegant irresistible art”;
or when he says of his relation to the Society of Benchers of Lin-
coln's Inn, that it was “a love-strife of desert and liberality”; or
when he describes “that last hour of his last day, as his body melted
away and vapored into spirit,” — he writes as one who understands
and respects the mysteries of language and the value of exquisite
expression
The series of biographies (all too few) in which he embalmed
the good memories of Sir Henry Wotton (1651), the Judicious Mr. Rich-
ard Hooker (1662), the Sacred Poet George Herbert (1670), and the
Devout Bishop Sanderson (1678), are adorned with some of the most
quaintly charming passages of prose to be found in English liter-
ature; and illuminated by a spirit of sincere charity and pious affec-
tion (except towards the Scotch and the Commonwealth-men), which
causes them to shine with a mild and steady lustre, like lamps hung
by grateful hands before the shrines of friendly and familiar saints.
Walton's "Lives, if he had written nothing else, would give him a
fair title to a place in a library of the world's best literature.
But his chief claim upon immortality, in the popular estimation,
rests on a work of another character. In The Complete Angler,
or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation,' Walton doubtless aimed at
nothing more than a small book of instruction in the secrets of his
beloved art; with which he mixed, as he says, “in several places,
not any scurrility, but some innocent harmless mirth, of which if
thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee
to be a competent judge; for divines say, there are offenses given,
and offenses not given but taken. ” But in thus making a recreation
of his recreation, a fortunate fisherman's luck befell him. Like a
man who in casting the fly for trout hooks a lordly salmon (and
this happy accident occurred to a friend of mine only the other day,
but sadly enough the salmon was not landed),— even so, Walton, in
seeking to win the approbation and gratitude of a little peaceable
brotherhood of anglers in the troubled age of Oliver Cromwell, caught
and kept the thankful admiration and praise of many generations of
readers. I think it likely that no one could be more surprised at this
unlooked-for but well-deserved result than himself; or more thankful
for the success which gave to his favorite sport the singular honor of
having inspired a classic in literature.
(The Complete Angler) must have been begun not long after his
retirement from business, for it was ready to be printed in 1650. But
## p. 15604 (#558) ##########################################
15604
IZAAK WALTON
man
the first edition did not appear until 1653. The second followed in 1655;
the third in 1661; the fourth in 1668; and the fifth, which was the
last printed during the author's lifetime, in 1676. In all of these new
editions, except the third, there were many alterations and enlarge-
ments; for Walton labored assiduously to perfect what he had written,
and the changes, even the slightest, display the care of a scrupulous
and affectionate workman in words. In the fifth edition a Second
Part was added, consisting of 'Instructions How to Angle for a Trout
or Grayling in a Clear Stream. ' This was written by Charles Cot-
ton, Esquire, of Beresford Hall, in imitation of his master's manner,
but at a considerable distance. Since that time more than a hundred
editions of the book have been published, of all shapes and sizes,
from the tiny 48ino of Pickering to the imperial octavo of Sir Har-
ris Nicolas; so that a can choose whether he will read Old
Izaak in large print from a broad-margined page on a library table,
or carry him in his pocket as Washington Irving did, and read him
under a beech-tree, in a green meadow just by a spring of pure sweet
water.
The value of 'The Complete Angler' at this day is not to be looked
for in its completeness. In its time, no doubt, it gave much new and
curious instruction to the novice in the art; for Walton was unrivaled
in his skill with bait, and Thomas Barker, the retired cook and active
humorist who helped him in his discourse upon artificial flies, was
an adept in that kind of angling. But most of these instructions, and
likewise the scientific dissertations upon fish and fish-ponds, have long
since gone out of date; and the book now belongs to the literature
of power rather than of knowledge. Its unfailing charm lies in its
descriptions of the country and of country life; in its quaint pas-
toral scenes, like the episode of the milkmaid, and the convocation
of gipsies; and in its constant, happy exhortations to contentment,
humility, and a virtuous, placid temper.
The form of the book is a dialogue, in which at first the respect-
ive merits of hunting, hawking, and angling are disputed; and then
the discourse falls chiefly into the mouth of Piscator, who expounds
the angler's contemplative sport to Venator, who has become his
willing and devoted pupil.
chief literary figure of his time, but he became
also an important political force.
In him too,
as in his great contemporaries Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue, the deep
religious spirit of the age found expression.
Gottfried von Strassburg pictured the courtly
graces, the manly accomplishments, and the
extravagant ideals, of chivalry at its height.
These men, with the legion of lesser Minne-
WALTHER
singers, shed radiance upon the reign of the
greatest of medieval emperors, Frederick II. ;
than whom no more enlightened prince had sat upon a European
throne since the days of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. Over
all that wonderful age lies the fairy charm of poetry and romance.
The court of Frederick recalls the fabled glories of the emperors of
Trebizond; it shines through the mists of nearly seven centuries like
an imperial city gleaming in a golden atmosphere. With the brave,
bold, broad-minded characteristics of the Hohenstaufen house, Fred-
erick united the rarest natural gifts, – learning, wisdom, foresight, and
a passionate love of art and science. According to the picture that
Raumer draws of him in the History of the Hohenstaufen,' he was
a warrior and statesman, a poet and a naturalist, and a protector
of learning and the fine arts. He mastered the languages of the six
dominions that were united under his imperial sway: Greek, Latin,
## p. 15581 (#535) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15581
Italian, German, French, and Arabic. He promulgated the Sicilian
Constitutions,- a book of laws far in advance of his times. He col-
lected a vast library in many languages, and on the greatest variety
of subjects. He made Greek works more accessible by having them
translated into the vernacular. Copies were sent to the University
of Bologna, although that institution stood in political opposition to
him. In 1224 he founded the University of Naples, and many stu-
dents were assisted from his own private purse.
After his coronation in 1215 he attached to himself Nicolà da
Pisano, who was the first to shake off the conventionality of Byzan-
tine art. Through neglect or destruction the imperial art collections
have been lost; but the beautiful coins of Frederick's reign, and the
splendid remains of palaces and castles, testify to the inspiring inter-
est that the Emperor took in the arts. The bridge at Capua with its
tower he designed himself. Mural paintings adorned at least one of
his castles, — that of Foggia,- and the mosaics of Palermo we owe
in a sense to him. It was he that gave an impulse to the study of
natural history by founding a zoological garden, which, through his
relations with Oriental princes, he was able to stock with exotic ani-
mals; and he caused a translation to be made of Aristotle's work on
zoology. He himself wrote a book on falconry, which has intrinsic
value aside from the interest which attaches to its age and origin.
And since he was a poet and wrote love lyrics, singers and poets
were gathered at his romantic court. His sympathies were, it is true,
far more Italian than German: his efforts in behalf of the Italian
tongue were soon to be crowned by the immortal work of Dante; but
he was liberal-minded enough to treat the German language in the
same way. Germany, to be sure, already had a literature, but the
indifference of such a man as Frederick could have done much to
check its development. The first State document in German, how-
ever, was issued by him when the Peace of Mayence was proclaimed
in 1235. In this care for the popular languages of his dominions he
resembled his great predecessors, Charlemagne and Alfred. He made
himself the centre of intellectual activity throughout his broad realm.
It was this age also that saw the rise of the great Dominican and
Franciscan orders, and of the Order of Mendicant Friars; it witnessed
the career of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At the north the court of
the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia became a rallying-point for min-
strelsy and song; the historic contest of the singers on the Wartburg
is a poetic memorial of those romantic days. Much that is best
in our traditional romance had its rise then. From the time of the
migrations down, rugged men of action had been making history
which the poetic mind of the people transmitted into legend, until in
this more cultivated age that vast fund of history and legend received
its artistic form from the shaping genius of the great poets.
## p. 15582 (#536) ##########################################
15582
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
It was in the twelfth century that the Nibelungenlied was put
into the strophes in which we read it. The crusade of Frederick
Barbarossa in 1189 gave a powerful impulse to the intellectual activity
of Germany. Contact with the Orient had introduced greater luxury
and a higher refinement into the arts of living. The barbarian hordes
which had overthrown the Roman empire had now taken their place
among the leaders of European civilization. This was the long mis-
understood and misrepresented thirteenth century, whose glories were
soon transfigured in legend, obscured by the rise of democracy, and
at last forgotten utterly in the wars of the seventeenth century.
Honest ignorance, and the zeal of bigotry, finally succeeded in fasten-
ing upon it the name of the Dark Ages! The darkness lay elsewhere;
for although we look back upon those dazzling days through the
beautifying medium of many centuries, which shows them stripped of
their sordidness and sorrow, it is certain that the early thirteenth
century was the most brilliant period in German literary history
until Goethe took up the Minnesingers' lyre, and evoked new har-
monies at the old Thuringian court.
It was of an age such as this that Walther von der Vogelweide
was the chief literary figure and a great political force. The rapid
development of chivalry during the crusades had brought with it the
Minnedienst, — the service and homage paid to women. Love and war
were the essence of life, and both were the inspiration of song. The
conception of love was deepened, idealized, refined. Love became an
ennobling and purifying influence. It is the chivalrous homage of
a vassal for a queen to whom he devotes his service and his life, -
a conception unknown in the ruder days when Siegfried conquered
Brünnhilde, and men won women sword in hand. In the expression
homage there was often much euphuistic exaggeration, which
weakened the directness of its appeal; but in Walther von der Vogel-
weide the note is always genuine, true, convincing. One of the
earliest examples of supersensual love in European literature is in
Walther's lines:-
«Would you know what may be the eyne
Wherewith I can see her whate'er befalls ?
They are the thoughts of this heart of mine;
Therewith I can see her through castle walls. )
Walther's poems not only reveal the character of the man, but
they tell the story of his life. They do not, however, give us the date
or place of his birth. He was probably born in the Tyrol in 1170.
At Bozen, on the borderlands between the German and Italian do-
minions of the Hohenstaufen emperors, Walther's heroic statue stands.
His earliest song of which the date is known belongs to the year
1198, and already shows the mature artist. For forty years, he says,
## p. 15583 (#537) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15583
>
he sang of love: it is no wonder, then, that in the end his love lyrics
lost some of the red blood of youth. The year 1198 marked an epoch
in his life. He had been attached to the Austrian court of the Baben-
bergers, and it was in Austria that he had learned “to sing and to
say. ” In 1197 the Emperor Henry VI. died, when his son, afterwards
Frederick II. , was but three years old. The political confusion
reached its highest point. Walther seems to have become for a time
a wandering minstrel, as did Wolfram also. The former sided with
Philip of Suabia, brother of Henry, and sang at his coronation; the
latter took the part of the rival King Otto. Philip triumphed; and at
the court of Hermann of Thuringia, who had submitted to Philip,
Walther was welcomed. It was there that he met Wolfram von
Eschenbach. That was a picturesque moment in the annals of Ger-
man literature, when the two greatest poets of the age came together
within the borders of that illustrious little principality, where nearly
seven hundred years later Goethe met his only rival and won his
friendship. From the inexhaustible youthfulness of Walther, Wolfram
derived his inspiration to finish the immortal Parzifal”; and to Wal-
ther, Wolfram seems to have imparted some of his ethical earnestness
and deep religious fervor. The contest on the Wartburg took place,
according to tradition, in 1207. Two years later there came a change
over the political face of Europe. Frederick II. , having attained his
fifteenth year, asserted his claim to his father's crown. He appeared
at Coire, and made a triumphant progress down the Rhine. Hermann
joined him, and Walther hailed him in a burst of lyric joy. And the
homeless singer had a personal end in view. This is his pathetic and
naïve petition : -
Fain, could it be, would I a home obtain,
And warm me by a hearth-side of my own.
Then, then, I'd sing about the sweet birds' strain,
And fields and flowers, as I have whilome done;
And paint in song the lily and the rose
That dwell upon her cheek who smiles on me.
But lone I stray — no home its comfort shows:
Ah, luckless man! still doomed a guest to be!
»
Frederick fulfilled his wish; and the poet broke out into the well-
known song of jubilation, I have my grant! I have my grant! ”
But he was never directly attached to the person of Frederick: he
returned to the liberal court of Leopold VII. , the Glorious, at Vienna,
and again sang a mendicant minstrel's song :-
<< To me is barred the door of joy and ease:
There stand I as an orphan, lone, forlorn,
And nothing boots me that I frequent knock.
## p. 15584 (#538) ##########################################
15584
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Strange that on every hand the shower should fall,
And not one cheering drop should reach to me!
On all around the generous Austrian's gifts,
Gladdening the land, like genial rain descend.
A fair and gay adornéd mead is he,
Whereon are gathered oft the sweetest flowers:
Would that his rich and ever generous hand
Might stoop to pick one little leaf for me,
So might I fitly praise a scene so fair. »
And when the great poets begged in song, the princes granted.
Walther fared sumptuously at Vienna, honored among the noblest of
the land.
Walther von der Vogelweide was the first patriot poet of Ger-
man literature. The essential inner unity of the empire he perceived
more clearly than perhaps any other man of his time. It was the
consciousness of this national homogeneity that gave bitterness to his
attacks upon the papacy. He resented foreign interference. The
popes had always found it hard to hold this sturdy independent race
in check; and now, when the papal power was at its height, the lead-
ing spirits of Germany were in open revolt against the exactions
of Rome. All the great achievements of Frederick II. were accom-
plished in spite of the ban of excommunication. Walther, like Dante
a few years later, was a stanch upholder of the empire; and neither
Hutten, nor Sachs, nor Luther, was more vigorous in denunciations
of Roman abuses than Walther the Minnesinger. In Walther's time
it was emperor and people against the pope; in Luther's it was
the people against emperor and pope: which marks the democratic
change already begun in the thirteenth century. Walther inveighed
as vigorously against the sectional strife of the German princes, and
deplored the effect upon the fatherland in lines of thrilling patriotic
fervor.
The great world-events in Walther's later life were the struggle
between Frederick II. and the popes Innocent III. and Gregory IX. ,
and the crusade which culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem. The
Pope had excommunicated the Emperor for failing to keep his vow
to institute a crusade, and Walther was outspoken in his urgency
that this vow should be fulfilled. He was ever faithful to Frederick;
but these doughty German singers were frank and bold for the thing
that they thought right. There is a crusader's song of Walther's
which would, taken literally, indicate that he had himself gone to the
Holy Land. Probably however he did not. As the poet grew old
his interest in purely worldly things decreased. His religious nature
.
asserted itself, and some of his loftiest poems strike a profoundly
devotional note. In Uhland's fine figure: «The earthly vanishes, -as
## p. 15585 (#539) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15585
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 Aed ?
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 concern-
ing his grave. It is said to have been provided in his will that
• XXVI–975
## p. 15586 (#540) ##########################################
15586
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
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, Gre-
gorius 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 loath-
some disease. Only the sacrifice of a young girl's life can
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. '
save
## p. 15587 (#541) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15587
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 eleva-
tion 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 Vogel-
weide 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 inspi-
ration 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 Ni-
tharte represented the triumph of vulgarity over the courtly. But
the descent was not precipitate, for there are still exquisite speci-
mens 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 inde-
fatigable industry of the sound-hearted Hans Sachs to rescue German
literature from hopeless coarseness. Walther's name was still hon-
ored 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
## p. 15588 (#542) ##########################################
15588
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
to-day every lover of pure lyric verse will echo with equal sincerity
the sentiment of Walther's younger contemporary, Hugo von Trim-
berg, 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 for-
get him. )
C
Chart Bruing
SONG OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
WHEN
HEN from the sod the flowerets spring,
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.
(
## p. 15589 (#543) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15589
LAMENT OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
A"
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 estranged, 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 careworn 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 ( 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.
## p. 15590 (#544) ##########################################
15590
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Yet now to who have listened a comfort I will show:
Even a gentle penance forgiveness shall bestow.
Remember this, O knightly lords, 'tis yours to do and seal;
You bear the glittering helmets and breastplates of strong steel,
Moreo'er the shields so steady and the consecrated swords:
O God, that I were worthy to join the victor lords !
Then should I like the others achieve a prize untold, -
Not lands that have been promised, nor king's or nobles' gold,
But oh, a wondrous crown, and forevermore to wear
A crown which poorest soldier can win with axe or spear.
Yea, if the noble crusade I might follow o'er the sea,
I evermore should sing, All's well! and nevermore, Ah me!
Nevermore, Ah me!
Translation of A. E. Kroeger.
SONG OF WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH
WOULD
OULD I the lofty spirit melt
Of that proud dame who dwells so high,
Kind Heaven must aid me, or unfelt
By her will be its agony.
Joy in my soul no place can find:
As well might I a suitor be
To thunderbolts, as hope her mind
Will turn in softer mood to me.
Those cheeks are beautiful, are bright
As the red rose with dewdrops graced;
And faultless is the lovely light
Of those dear eyes, that, on me placed,
Pierce to my very heart, and fill
My soul with love's consuming fires,
While passion burns and reigns at will, -
So deep the love that fair inspires!
But joy upon her beauteous form
Attends, her hues so bright to shed
O'er those red lips, before whose warm
And beaming smile all care is fled.
She is to me all light and joy;
I faint, I die, before her frown:
Even Venus, lived she yet on earth,
A fairer goddess here must own.
## p. 15591 (#545) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15591
While many mourn the vanished light
Of summer, and the sweet sun's face,
I mourn that these, however bright,
No anguish from the soul can chase
By love inflicted: all around
Nor song of birds, nor ladies' bloom,
Nor flowers upspringing from the ground,
Can chase or cheer the spirit's gloom.
Yet still thine aid, beloved, impart;
Of all thy power, thy love, make trial;
Bid joy revive in this sad heart,-
Joy that expires at thy denial:
Well may I pour my prayer to thee,
Belovèd lady, since 'tis thine
Alone to send such care on me;
Alone for thee I ceaseless pine.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
BLANCHEFLEUR AT THE TOURNAMENT
From (Tristan and Isolde) of Gottfried von Strassburg
A
T TINTAJOEL 'twas, on the plain
Where the guests met again;
In the loveliest glen
Ever beheld by eyes of men
In the first freshness of that clime.
The gentle, gracious summer-time
Had by the sweet Creator's hand
With sweet care been poured on the land.
Of little wood birdlets bright,
That to ears should ever give delight,
Of grass, flowers, leaves, and blossoms high,
Of all that happy makes the eye
Or noble heart delight may gain,
Was full the glorious summer plain.
Whatever there you wished to find,
Spring had kindly borne in mind, -
The sunshine by the shadow,
The linden on the meadow.
The gentle, pleasant breezes,
With cunning, sweet caresses,
## p. 15592 (#546) ##########################################
15592
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
O'er all the guests did lightly sweep.
The brilliant flowers did brightly peep
From dewy grass and shadow.
May's friend, the fresh green meadow,
Had from the flowers that he had reared
A summer robe so bright prepared,
Each guest its glow detected
From eye and mien reflected.
The sweet tree blossom looked at you
With a smile so sweet and true,
That all your heart and all your mind
Again to the laughing bloom inclined;
With eyes playfully burning,
Its loving laugh returning.
The gentle bird-ditty,
So lovely, so pretty,
That stirs every feeling,
O'er ears and minds stealing,
Rang from each bush of the summer vale.
The blessed nightingale,
The dearest, sweetest bird on tree,
That ever blessed ought to be,
It sang in the coolness,
With such heartfulness,
That to every noble heart
The sound did joy and glow impart.
And now the whole company,
Full of mirth and in high glee,
Had settled down upon the lawn.
There did every one
As his notion or pleasure bent,
And put up or arranged his tent.
The wealthy were quartered wealthily,
The courtly incomparably;
Some under silk did rest,
Others on the heath gay-drest;
To many the linden gave shadow,
Others housed on the meadow,
Under leaf-green twigs demurely.
Nor guests nor servants, surely,
Rarely were pleasanter
Quartered than they were quartered here.
Plenty was gathered of the best,
Which needful is for mirthful feast,
## p. 15593 (#547) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15593
In way of clothing and eating;
Each his own wants meeting,
From home had brought provender.
King Mark, with regal splendor,
Moreover had provided for them.
Thus they enjoyed in bliss supreme
The gracious time of early spring;
Thus joy the feast to all did bring.
All that ever a curious man
To behold had longed, he then
There could have seen certainly.
One saw there what one liked to see:
Those eyed the pretty women,
These watched the peddling showmen;
Those looked at the dancing,
These at the jousting and lancing.
All that ever heart longed for
Was found there in sufficient store;
And all who were present,
Of joy-ripe years, pleasant
Effort made each to exceed
At every feast in mirthful deed;
And King Mark the good,
The courteous and high of mood,
Not only on this festivity
Had spent his wealth lavishly,
But here did he show men
A wonder of all women,
His sister Blanchefleur,-
A maid more beautiful than e'er
A woman upon earth was seen.
Of her beauty one must say, e'en,
That no living man could gaze
Intently on her glorious face,
But he would higher rank and find
Women and virtue in his mind.
The blessed eye-pleasure
O'er that wide inclosure
Gladdened all of young, fresh blood,
All noble hearts of courteous mood;
And on the lawn could have been seen
Many pretty women then,
## p. 15594 (#548) ##########################################
15594
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Of whom each by her beauty
Should have been queen in duty.
Whoe'er had seen them surely would
Have drawn from such sight fresh bold mood.
Many hearts grew rich with joy.
Now began the great tourney
Of the servants and of the guests.
The boldest and the best
Up and down the track now paced.
Noble Mark ahead e'er raced
With his fellow Riwalin,
Whose knights following close and keen
Their play to guide ever
Did nobly endeavor
In their master's glory,
For future song and story.
Many a horse, in overdress
Of cloth or half silk, in the race
Was seen on the meadow clover;
Many a snow-white cover
There shone, or red, brown, green, or blue;
Others again, for show, wore too
Robes with noble silk worked nice,
Or scalloped in many a quaint device,
Parted, striped, or braided,
Or with trimmings shaded.
Gayly, too, appeared there
Knights of handsome form and fair,
Their armor slit, as if cut to pieces.
Even Spring with its balmy breezes,
King Mark its high favor showed;
For many people in the crowd
Were crowned with wreaths of flowers wrought,
Which, as his offering, Spring had brought.
In such glorious, blessed May,
Began the blessed tourney.
Oft intermixed, the double troop
Rode up this grade, rode down that slope.
This carried they on so long that day,
Till downward swept the glorious play
To where Blanchefleur sat, the sweet,
Whom I as wonder greet,
With pretty women at her side,
To watch the show and the gallant ride :
## p. 15595 (#549) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15595
And how they rode so nobly all,
With carriage imperial,
That many an eye with pleasure lit.
But whatsoever others did,
Still 'twas the courtly Riwalin -
As 'twas, indeed, meet to have been -
Who before all the knighthood rare
Best showed his knightly power there.
The women, too, him notice showed,
And whispered that, in all the crowd,
No one on horse appearing
Rode with such gallant bearing.
They praised that which in him was shown.
« See! ” said they,— see! this youth fine-grown,
This man, is truly glorious!
How gloriously sits all he does,
Sit all movements of his bearing!
How his body is fair-appearing!
How joins with equal grace on him
Each imperial limb!
How evenly his shield is moved !
As if fast-glued, it floats aloft!
How doth the shaft his hand befit!
How well his robes upon him sit!
How stands his head! how glows his hair!
Sweet his behavior he doth wear;
Glorified is his body all!
Ah, happy is the woman who shall
Her bliss owe his sweet body. ”
Well pondered this in study
Blanchefleur, the blessed maid;
In her secret heart she had,
Above all knights, addressed to him
Her pleasant thoughts, her wond'rings dim.
She had him in her heart enshrined,
He had around her soul him twined;
He bore upon high throne
The sceptre and the crown
In the kingdom of her heart,
Although the secret she did guard,
And from the world keep, as was fit,
That no one e'er suspected it.
Translation of A. E. Kroeger.
## p. 15596 (#550) ##########################################
15596
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF HEINRICH VON VELDECHE
N°
O THANKS to Tristan that his heart had been
Faithful and true unto his queen;
For thereto did a potion move
More than the power of love:
Sweet thought to me,
That ne'er such cup my lips have prest;
Yet deeper love than ever he
Conceived, dwells in my breast:
So may it be!
So constant may it rest!
Call me but thine
As thou art mine!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN
M
Y LADY dearly loves a pretty bird,
That sings and echoes back her gentle tone;
Were I, too, near her, never should be heard
A songster's note more pleasant than my own,-
Sweeter than sweetest nightingale I'd sing.
For thee, my lady fair,
This yoke of love I bear:
Deign thou to comfort me, and ease my sorrowing.
Were but the troubles of my heart by her
Regarded, I would triumph in my pain;
But her proud heart stands firmly, and the stir
Of passionate grief o'ercomes not her disdain.
Yet, yet I do remember how before
My eyes she stood and spoke,
And on her gentle look
My earnest gaze was fixed: oh, were it so once more!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15597 (#551) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15597
SONG OF HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN
M
INE is the fortune of a simple child,
That in the glass his image looks upon;
And by the shadow of himself beguiled
Breaks quick the brittle charm, and joy is gone.
So gazed I- and I deemed my joy would last-
On the bright image of my lady fair :
But ah! the dream of my delight is past,
And love and rapture yield to dark despair.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF COUNT KRAFT VON TOGGENBURG
DºF
OES any one seek the soul of mirth,
Let him hie to the greenwood tree,
And there beneath the verdant shade,
The bloom of the summer see;
For there sing the birds right merrily,
And there will the bounding heart upspring
To the lofty clouds on joyful wing.
On the hedge-rows spring a thousand flowers,
And he from whose heart sweet May
Hath banished care, finds many a joy:
And I too would be gay,
Were the load of pining care away;
Were my lady kind, my soul were light,
Joy crowning joy would raise its flight.
.
The Aowers, leaves, hills, the vale, and mead,
And May with all its light,
Compared with the roses are pale indeed,
Which my lady bears; and bright
My eyes will shine as they meet my sight -
Those beautiful lips of rosy hue,
As red as the rose just steeped in dew.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15598 (#552) ##########################################
15598
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF STEINMAR
·W""
Tith the graceful corn upspringing,
With the birds around me singing,
With the leaf-crowned forests waving,
Sweet May-dews the herbage laving,
With the flowers that round me bloom,
To my lady dear I'll come:
All things beautiful and bright,
Sweet sound and fair to sight -
Nothing, nothing is too rare
For my beauteous lady fair;
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
She is one in whom I find
All things fair and bright combined.
When her beauteous form I see,
Kings themselves might envy me;
Joy with joy is gilded o'er,
Till the heart can hold no more.
She is bright as morning sun,
She my fairest, loveliest one:
For the honor of the fair,
I will sing her beauty rare;
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
Solace me, then, sweetest ! - be
Such in heart as I to thee;
Ope thy beauteous lips of love,
Call me thine, and then above
Merrily, merrily I will sail
With the light clouds on the gale.
Dear one, deign my heart to bless!
Steer me on to happiness!
Thou, in whom my soul confideth,
Thou, whose love my spirit guideth!
Everything I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15599 (#553) ##########################################
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15599
SONG OF THE MARNER »
M**
ARIA! Virgin! mother! comforter
Of sinners! queen of saints in heaven that are!
Thy beauty round the eternal throne doth cast
A brightness that outshines its living rays;
There in the fullness of transcendent joy
Heaven's King and thou sit in bright majesty:
Would I were there, a welcomed guest at last
Where angel tongues re-echo praise to praise!
There Michael sings the blessed Savior's name,
Till round the eternal throne it rings once more,
And angels in their choirs with glad acclaim,
Triumphant host, their joyful praises pour;
There thousand years than days more short appear,
Such joy from God doth flow and from that mother dear.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
ABSENCE
(ANONYMOUS)
I
F I a small bird were,
And little wings might bear,
I'd fly to thee;
But vain those wishes are:
Here, then, my rest shall be.
When far from thee I bide,
In dreams still at thy side
I've talked with thee;
And when I woke, I sighed,
Myself alone to see.
No hour of wakeful night
But teems with thoughts of light, -
Sweet thoughts of thee,-
As when, in hours more bright,
Thou gav'st thy heart to me.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15600 (#554) ##########################################
15600
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
SONG OF CONRAD VON WÜRZBURG
SEE
EE how from the meadows pass
Brilliant flowers and verdant grass;
All their hues now they lose: o'er them hung,
Mournful robes the woods invest,
Late with leafy honors drest.
Yesterday the roses gay blooming sprung,
Beauteously the fields adorning;
Now their sallow branches fail :
Wild her tuneful notes at morning
Sung the lovely nightingale;
Now in woe, mournful, low, is her song.
Nor for lily nor rose sighs he,
Nor for birds' sweet harmony,
He to whom winter's gloom brings delight:
Seated by his leman dear,
He forgets the altered year;
Sweetly glide at eventide the moments bright.
Better this than culling posies:
For his lady's love he deems
Sweeter than the sweetest roses;
Little he the swain esteems
Not possessing that best blessing - love's delight.
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
SONG OF JOHANN HADLOUB
F1
Ar as I journey from my lady fair,
I have a messenger who quickly goes,
Morning, and noon, and at the evening's close:
Where'er she wanders, he pursues her there.
A restless, faithful, secret messenger
Well may he be, who, from my heart of hearts,
Charged with love's deepest secrets, thus departs,
And wings his way to her!
'Tis every thought I form that doth pursue
Thee, lady fair!
Ah! would that there
My wearied self had leave to follow too!
Translation of Edgar Taylor.
## p. 15601 (#555) ##########################################
15601
IZAAK WALTON
(1593–1683)
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
>>
a
OF THE life of Master Izaak Walton, angler, author, and linen-
draper, but little is known, and all to his credit. In a life
so sparingly diversified with events, the biographer is di-
vided in his mind between regret that the material for narration is
so small, and gratitude that the picture of a good man's character
and peaceful occupation stands out so clear
and untroubled.
Izaak Walton was born at the town of
Stafford, in the English county of the same
name, in August 1593. Of his education
he speaks with becoming modesty: and it
is probable that it was slight, for at the
age of nineteen years he was engaged in
• retail trade in London. His first shop was
in the Royal Burse, Cornhill, and was only
seven and a half feet long by five feet
wide. ” But he seems to have done
good business at this humble stand; for in
1624 he had a la shop in Fleet Street,
IZAAK Walton
and in 1632 he bought a lease of a house
and shop in Chancery Lane, where his occupation is described as that
of a “sempster” or “milliner. ”
It is certain that he did not live for his trade, though he lived by
it; for as early as 1619 we find a book of verse, The Love of Amos
and Laura,' dedicated to him as a person of acknowledged taste
and skill in letters. The friendships which he formed with Dr. John
Donne the metaphysical preacher and poet, with Sir Henry Wot-
ton the witty and honest ambassador, with the learned John Hales
of Eton College, and with many other persons of like ability and
distinction, prove him to have been a man of singular intelligence,
amiable character, and engaging conversation. In some of these friend-
ships, no doubt, the love of angling — to which recreation he was
attached by a pure and temperate and enduring passion — was either
the occasion of intimacy or the promoter of it. For it has often
been observed that this gentle sport inclines the hearts of those that
XXVI–976
-
-
## p. 15602 (#556) ##########################################
15602
IZAAK WALTON
as
a
»
practice it to friendliness; and there are no closer or more lasting
companionships than such as are formed beside flowing streams by
men who study to be quiet and go a-fishing. ” And this Walton did,
as we know from his own testimony. He turned from the hooks and
eyes of his shop to cast the hook for the nimble trout or the slug-
gish chub, in the waters of the Lea, or of the New River, with such
cheerful comrades as honest Nat. and R. Roe; “but they are gone,”
he adds, “and with them most of my pleasant hours, even
shadow that passeth away and returns not. ”
In 1626 he married Rachel Floud, a great-great-niece of Arch-
bishop Cranmer. She died in 1640, leaving a child who survived her
but two years.
In 1643, about the beginning of the Civil War,— which he deplored
and reprobated with as much bitterness as was possible to a man of
his gentle disposition,- he retired from business with a modest for-
tune, and purchased a small estate near his native town, in the heart
of rural England and in the neighborhood of good fishing. Here he
lived in peace and quietness, passing much of his time as a welcome
visitor in the families of eminent clergymen; "of whom,” says the
gossipy old chronicler Anthony Wood, «he was much beloved. ”
About 1646 he married again; the bride being a lady of discreet
age, — not less than thirty-five years,- and a stepsister of Thomas
Ken, who afterwards became the beloved Bishop of Bath and Wells,
and the honored author of the Evening Hymn,' with many other
pieces of sacred poetry. This is the lady who is spoken of so pleas-
antly as “Kenna” in “The Angler's Wish,' Walton's best poem. She
died in 1662, leaving two children: a son, Izaak Walton Jr. , who
lived a useful, tranquil life and died unmarried; and a daughter who
became the wife of the Rev. Dr. William Hawkins, a prebendary in
the Church of Winchester, in whose house Walton died.
With such close and constant associations among the clergy, it
was but natural that Walton's first essay in literature should have an
ecclesiastical flavor. . It was "The Life of Dr. John Donne,' prefixed
to the sermons of that noted divine and difficult poet, — which were
published in 1640, while Walton was still keeping shop in London.
The brief biography was a very remarkable piece of work for an
untried author; and gave evidence of a hand that, however it may
have acquired its skill, was able to modulate the harmonies of English
prose, with a rare and gentle charm, to a familiar tune,— the praise
of piety and benevolence and humbleness,- and yet with such fresh
and simple turns of humor and tenderness as delight the heart while
they satisfy the judgment.
Walton speaks, in the preface to this ‘Life,' of his “artless pencil. ”
But in truth it was the ars celare artem that belonged to him. His
## p. 15603 (#557) ##########################################
IZAAK WALTON
15603
writing shows that final and admirable simplicity which is always
the result of patient toil and the delicate, loving choice of words.
When, for example, he speaks of Master Donne as proceeding in a
certain search « with all moderate haste," or of his behavior (which,
when it would entice, had a strange kind of elegant irresistible art”;
or when he says of his relation to the Society of Benchers of Lin-
coln's Inn, that it was “a love-strife of desert and liberality”; or
when he describes “that last hour of his last day, as his body melted
away and vapored into spirit,” — he writes as one who understands
and respects the mysteries of language and the value of exquisite
expression
The series of biographies (all too few) in which he embalmed
the good memories of Sir Henry Wotton (1651), the Judicious Mr. Rich-
ard Hooker (1662), the Sacred Poet George Herbert (1670), and the
Devout Bishop Sanderson (1678), are adorned with some of the most
quaintly charming passages of prose to be found in English liter-
ature; and illuminated by a spirit of sincere charity and pious affec-
tion (except towards the Scotch and the Commonwealth-men), which
causes them to shine with a mild and steady lustre, like lamps hung
by grateful hands before the shrines of friendly and familiar saints.
Walton's "Lives, if he had written nothing else, would give him a
fair title to a place in a library of the world's best literature.
But his chief claim upon immortality, in the popular estimation,
rests on a work of another character. In The Complete Angler,
or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation,' Walton doubtless aimed at
nothing more than a small book of instruction in the secrets of his
beloved art; with which he mixed, as he says, “in several places,
not any scurrility, but some innocent harmless mirth, of which if
thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee
to be a competent judge; for divines say, there are offenses given,
and offenses not given but taken. ” But in thus making a recreation
of his recreation, a fortunate fisherman's luck befell him. Like a
man who in casting the fly for trout hooks a lordly salmon (and
this happy accident occurred to a friend of mine only the other day,
but sadly enough the salmon was not landed),— even so, Walton, in
seeking to win the approbation and gratitude of a little peaceable
brotherhood of anglers in the troubled age of Oliver Cromwell, caught
and kept the thankful admiration and praise of many generations of
readers. I think it likely that no one could be more surprised at this
unlooked-for but well-deserved result than himself; or more thankful
for the success which gave to his favorite sport the singular honor of
having inspired a classic in literature.
(The Complete Angler) must have been begun not long after his
retirement from business, for it was ready to be printed in 1650. But
## p. 15604 (#558) ##########################################
15604
IZAAK WALTON
man
the first edition did not appear until 1653. The second followed in 1655;
the third in 1661; the fourth in 1668; and the fifth, which was the
last printed during the author's lifetime, in 1676. In all of these new
editions, except the third, there were many alterations and enlarge-
ments; for Walton labored assiduously to perfect what he had written,
and the changes, even the slightest, display the care of a scrupulous
and affectionate workman in words. In the fifth edition a Second
Part was added, consisting of 'Instructions How to Angle for a Trout
or Grayling in a Clear Stream. ' This was written by Charles Cot-
ton, Esquire, of Beresford Hall, in imitation of his master's manner,
but at a considerable distance. Since that time more than a hundred
editions of the book have been published, of all shapes and sizes,
from the tiny 48ino of Pickering to the imperial octavo of Sir Har-
ris Nicolas; so that a can choose whether he will read Old
Izaak in large print from a broad-margined page on a library table,
or carry him in his pocket as Washington Irving did, and read him
under a beech-tree, in a green meadow just by a spring of pure sweet
water.
The value of 'The Complete Angler' at this day is not to be looked
for in its completeness. In its time, no doubt, it gave much new and
curious instruction to the novice in the art; for Walton was unrivaled
in his skill with bait, and Thomas Barker, the retired cook and active
humorist who helped him in his discourse upon artificial flies, was
an adept in that kind of angling. But most of these instructions, and
likewise the scientific dissertations upon fish and fish-ponds, have long
since gone out of date; and the book now belongs to the literature
of power rather than of knowledge. Its unfailing charm lies in its
descriptions of the country and of country life; in its quaint pas-
toral scenes, like the episode of the milkmaid, and the convocation
of gipsies; and in its constant, happy exhortations to contentment,
humility, and a virtuous, placid temper.
The form of the book is a dialogue, in which at first the respect-
ive merits of hunting, hawking, and angling are disputed; and then
the discourse falls chiefly into the mouth of Piscator, who expounds
the angler's contemplative sport to Venator, who has become his
willing and devoted pupil.
