WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE.
Vogelweide the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,
Under Würtzburg’s minster towers.
And he gave the monks his treasures,
Gave them all with this behest:
They should feed the birds at noontide
Daily on his place of rest;
Saying, “From these wandering minstrels
I have learned the art of song;
Let me now repay the lessons
They have taught so well and long.”
Thus the bard of love departed;
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
Day by day, o’er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet’s sculptured face,
On the cross-bars of each window,
On the lintel of each door,
They renewed the War of Wartburg,
Which the bard had fought before.
There they sang their merry carols,
Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered
Was the name of Vogelweide.
Till at length the portly abbot
Murmured, “Why this waste of food?
Be it changed to loaves henceforward
For our fasting brotherhood.”
Then in vain o’er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.
Time has long effaced the inscriptions
On the cloister’s funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet’s bones.
But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweide.
Walther’s lyrical poems are distinguished from those of most of his contemporaries by a strong impress of sincerity and a wide range of thought.
When he hails the coming of the spring after a long winter, he imitates in the gladness of his heart the carols of the birds, and goes on in melodious verses to speak of the beauty of the lady to whom he dedicates his song, but whom he never names. In the next song the reader, to his surprise, will find the minstrel changed into a satirist, who denounces the political and religious corruptions of his time, rebukes the Pope for his worldly ambition and predicts a speedy ruin of the world. These are not all the notes of the scale on which his songs are constructed. As a specimen of his lighter and more popular style, the following strophe in praise of German women may serve:
In many foreign lands I’ve been
And knights and ladies there have seen;
But here alone I find my rest—
Old Germany is still the best;
Some other lands have pleased me well;
But here—’tis here I choose to dwell.
German men have virtues rare,
And German maids are angels fair.
He rises to a higher strain than this in other lyrics, where he places domestic virtue above external beauty, and speaks of minne in the higher interpretation of the word. “Even where it can not be returned,” he says, “if devoted to one worthy of it, it ennobles a man’s life. His affection for one teaches him to be kind and generous to all.” Walther pleasantly describes himself as by no means good-looking, and censures all praise bestowed on men for their merely exterior advantages. And he is no fanatical worshiper of feminine beauty, affirming that it may sometimes be a thin mask worn over bad passions.
With regard to their moral and social purport the verses of Walther have a considerable historical interest. They show us how insecurely the Church held the faith and loyalty of German men in the thirteenth century.
Walther is bold and violent in his defiance and contempt of the Pope’s usurpation of temporal authority. Referring in one place to a fable commonly believed in his times, he says: “When Constantine gave the spear of temporal power, as well as the spear and the crown to the See of Rome, the angels in heaven lamented, and well they might; for that power is now abused to annoy the emperor and to stir up the princes, his vassals against him.” The poet was as earnest in dissuading the people from contributing money to support the Crusades. “Very little of it,” he says, “will ever find its way into the Holy Land. The Pope is now filling his Italian coffers with our German silver.” This saying seems to have been very popular for a tame moralist who lived in Walther’s time complains that, by making such statements, the poet was perverting the faith of many people. “All his fine verses,” the moralist adds, “will not atone for that bad libel on Rome.” Yet the author of it was quite orthodox in doctrine, and was enthusiastic in his zeal for rescuing the Holy Sepulcher from the Saracens.
Many of his verses express earnestly his love for his native land, and his grief for social and political disorders of his times. He believes that the world is falling a prey to anarchy. “I hear the rushing of the water,” he says, “and I watch the movements of the fish that swim in its depth. I explore the habits of the creatures of this world in the forest and in the field, from the beast of the field down to the insect, and I find that there is nowhere any life that is not vexed by anarchy and strife. Warfare is found everywhere, and yet some order is preserved even among animals; but in my own native land, where the petty princes are lifting themselves up against the emperor, we are hastening on to anarchy.” The course of events proved that he was too true in this prediction. Resignation and despair, rather than any hope of a reconciliation of religion with practical life, characterize other meditative poems. The following is one of the best of this class:
I sat one day upon a stone,
And meditated long, alone,
While resting on my hand my head,
In silence to myself I said:
“How, in these days of care and strife,
Shall I employ my fleeting life?
Three precious jewels I require
To satisfy my heart’s desire:
The first is honor, bright and clear,
The next is wealth, and far more dear,
The third is heaven’s approving smile;”
Then, after I had mused a while
I saw that it was vain to pine
For these three pearls in one small shrine;
To find within one heart a place
For honor, wealth, and heavenly grace;
For how can one in days like these
Heaven and the world together please?
—From “Outlines of German Literature”
—Gostwick and Harrison.