These are sadder:
There is a lime tree in this valley,
O God! what does it there?
It will help me to grieve
That I have no lover.
'Alas! you mountains and deep valleys, is this the last time I shall see my beloved? Sun, moon, and the whole sky must grieve with me till my death.'
Where lovers embrace, flowers spring out of the grass, roses and other flowers and grasses laugh, the trees creak and birds sing;[[9]] where lovers part, grass and leaves fade.[[10]]
Most touching of all is the idea, common to the national songs of all nations, that out of the grave of two lovers, lilies and roses spring up, or climbing plants, love thus outliving death.
We look in vain among the master singers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for such fresh heartfelt tones as these, although honest Hans Sachs shews joy in Nature here and there; most charmingly in the famous comparison of 'the Wittenberg Nightingale, which every one hears everywhere now,' in praise of Luther:
'Wake up, the dawn is nigh! I hear a joyous nightingale singing in the green hedge, it fills the hills and valleys with its voice. The night is stooping to the west, the day is rising from the east, the morning red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks through. The moon quenches her light; now she is pale and wan, but erewhile with false glamours she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from their pasture lands and pastor....'