Triumphant host, their joyful praises pour:
There thousand years than days more short appear,
Such joy from God doth flow and from that mother dear."
The eternal longing for the divine then melts mysteriously into the longing for the youthful love of woman. This longing is perhaps nowhere in literature expressed with more touching, more naïve delicacy than by Gottfried when he has fair Sigune speak to Herzeloide concerning her Schionatulander whom she loved as ever woman loved man, and who was then absent in war:
"For the loved friend is all my spying;
From the window on the road, over heather and bright meadows
All in vain; I espy him not:
Alas! my eyes by tears must dearly pay for longing love.
"From the window do I ascend to the battlement,
And spy eastward, westward, after tidings from him,