Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/398

 awe of Nature's lasting majesty or the true love of her beauty. In the Chansons de Geste and the songs of Minnesingers the life of the wandering minstrel could not but leave traces of Nature’s influences; but these are seen merely in general allusions, and if among the trampling of horses and the baying of hounds, among the sights and sounds of the chase or the hawking party, we catch a glimpse of "gentle May," or the "dew glistening on the heather-bells," or hear the song of the nightingale, it is only because the feudal scene needs the addition of some such prettiness. These feudal singers reverse the practice of that prose-poet Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who makes his narratives only frames for his pictures of Nature; they offer us hardly any pictures of Nature, little but scattered images (such as the "fading leaves of autumn" or "the fields bared in winter's snow"), which are so frequently and mechanically repeated as to suggest anything but lively sympathy with Nature. The flower and the leaf are but emblems of war and love to them; as sings Bertran de Born—

German critics have asked whether contact with Southern Italy, with Asia Minor and Palestine by the Crusades, enriched the feudal poetry of Germany with new imagery drawn from more sunny climes, and have decided in the negative. The question suggests one reason for the weak and stereotyped sentiments of Nature