Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/49

37 seemliness and honour are dead." At the last Walther's grey memory of life and his vainly yearning hope took form in a great elegy. After long years he seemed, with heavy steps, and leaning on his wanderer's staff, to be returning to a home which was changed forever: "Alas! whither are they vanished, my many years! Did I dream my life, or is it real? what I once deemed it, was it that? And now I wake, and all the things and people once familiar, strange! My playmates, dull and old! And the fields changed; only that the streams still flow as then they flowed, my heart would break with thinking on the glad days, vanished in the sea. And the young people! slow and mirthless! and the knights go clad as peasants! Ah! Rome! thy ban! Our groans have stilled the song of birds. Fool I, to speak and so despair,—and the earth looks fair! Up knights again: your swords, your armour! would to God I might fare with your victor band, and gain my pay too—not in lands of earth! Oh! might I win the eternal crown from that sweet voyage beyond the sea, then would I sing O joy! and never more, alas—never more, alas."