Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/269

 POPULAR POETRY 257 It is an oft-repeated tale, A century old and more, Who ne'er in sorrow hath wept, Never in love hath smiled. God guides : Mein herz das ist betriibet ser, Gott alle ding zum besten ker ! Ich fahr dahin mit schmerzen, Ich sich, dass ich's nicht wenden kann, Gott trost all' betriibte herzen. My heart is oppressed to-day. God guides us on our way. I walk life's path still tottering, I have no strength within rne. God helps the confiding heart. The popular poetry of the age was in close sym- pathy with Nature, and invoked the trees and flowers, birds and beasts, sun and moon and stars, to take part in its joy or sorrow, its earnestness or its humour. Sometimes Nature is an integral part of the poem, some- times only the background or the setting. So long as the Germans were free from the passion and bitterness engendered by party spirit and religious wars they were great admirers of Nature. Its influence is to be noted in all their works and ways. The annual fairs bore proof of this, and so did the arts, even when pursued within the cloister or the walled city. Architec- tural art adorned the stone houses with carvings of trees, flowers, &c. ; and while the painters, even when giving the most purely spiritual expression to their faces, went to Nature for their backgrounds, German poets knew no fitter symbols of human happiness than the sun's effulgence, the moon's beams, the bird's song, or the woodland shade. 1 Love of Nature was at the 1 Uhland's work on folk-songs ranks among the best of German literature. VOL. I. 8