Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/395



§ 95. In the earliest poetry of Europe, poetry which reflects the stormy local life out of which national union was to slowly grow, man is too busy with his tribal wars and his conflict with rugged Nature to sing of the mountains or the forests with any sense of pleasure. In Beowulf, Grendel's shadow, dark and deadly, "roams all night the misty moors." When the cruiser "foamy-necked" across the "wild swan's path" has reached the glittering cliffs, the Weders thank God "for making easy to them the watery way." For the Scôp knows nothing, of the glad waters of the dark blue sea or the moonlit lakes of later poesy; he fears the sunset when "dusky night, the shadowing helmet of all creatures, lowering beneath the clouds comes gliding on;" he fears "the haunted waters of the Nixes' mere," and gladly sees the dawn of "God's bright beacon" in the east.

Nor is this want of sympathy with Nature confined to the poetry of the Sea-Robbers. "We find no description of scenery either in the Nibelungen or the Gudrun even where the occasion might lead us to look for it. In the otherwise circumstantial account of the chase during which Siegfried is murdered, the only natural features mentioned are the blooming heather and the cool fountain under the linden tree." In Gudrun,