Warmly will thy sunny smile
Rest upon my heart.
Spring the earth is greeting, love,
With a crown of flowers;
For the hour of meeting, love,
Sweeter hopes are ours.”
So sung, in a rich, mellow, though somewhat subdued voice, a young man, as he stood beneath the window of a grim old mansion. The sun had but just risen, and sky and earth seemed still bathed in his soft rosy glow. Flowers of delicate form and many a brilliant tint were gemming the greensward, which looked fresh and bright as emerald. Fringed with hoary rocks and thick dark woods, lay the deep blue waters of the lovely Rhine, seeming as if the spirits of the early morning had flung on them a rich robe of golden sheen. Even the black forest in the far distance, and the old, apparently half-ruinous mansion itself, all but laughed in the glowing light; hailing, as they did, the new birth of nature, as well as that of the day. Spring had, within the last few days, leaped from the arms of winter; and flowers and birds, and earth and sky, welcomed his birth, as with a very jubilee of gladness.
The deep seclusion of the scene, however, was remarkable: castles and towns, convents and monasteries, generally studded the banks of the Rhine, even as early as the close of the eleventh century, the period of our narrative; but here there was not a habitation of any kind visible, save this one old house and its out-door offices.
It was a Hebrew school or college, the origin of which was so far removed into the past as to be involved in mystery. From its extreme seclusion it had remained undisturbed, when elsewhere every trace of Israels locality had been washed out in blood. Century after century beheld it occupied by a succession of venerable teachers, learned in all the mysteries of their law, and faithful to its every ordinance; by some few Hebrew families who, from being pupils, loved its peaceful seclusion too well to exchange it for the dangers of towns; and by some youths, brought there by anxious parents, or there own will, to learn such lessons as would bid them live to glorify their faith, or die to seal its truth with blood.
The young minstrel, whose song we have given, had been one of these pupils since the age of ten, and was about returning to Worms, his native city, to see his widowed mother, from whom he had been parted fourteen years, obtain her blessing on his choice (the daughter of one of his teachers), and then return for his betrothed, either to dwell in this safe retreat or elsewhere, as circumstances might be.