Now this mechanism and the wonderful language which it operated upon being in the possession and under the full control of such men as were the poets of that day, the result could be only poems of perfect form, and yet at the same time naïve, earnest, intense, and enthusiastic in their character. For those poets were not—like those of our modern poets who have completest control of the mechanism of poetry, as Tennyson, Swinburne, etc.—poets of a cold, reflective bent of mind, but they were simple knights, with great enthusiasm in the cause of the Crusades and of ladies; at the same time gifted with a wondrous power of versification. A considerable number of them, some of the best, as Wolfram von Eschenbach, Ulrich von Lichtenstein, etc., could not even write and read, and had to dictate their poems to their Singerlein, or sing it to him—for these poets invented a melody for each of their poems—which Singerlein again transmitted it in the same manner until, in the course of time, these unwritten Minnelieder were, as much as possible, gathered together by the noble knight, Ruediger von Manasse, his son, and the Minnesinger, Johann Hadlaub, put into manuscript, and thus happily preserved for future generations.
The songs that these Minnesingers sang are of a threefold character: either in praise of the ladies, usually coupled with references to the seasons of the year; or of a didactic character; or, finally, in praise of the Virgin.
Their form is only twofold: either they are lays or songs proper. The song or Minnelied proper has invariably a triplicity of form in each stanza, that is, each stanza has three parts, whereof the first two correspond with each other exactly, whereas the third has an independent, though of course rhythmically connected, flow of its own. The lay, on the contrary, is of irregular construction, and permits the widest rhythmical liberties.
Of the many Minnelieder addressed to the Virgin we have presented to us examples of both kinds, lays and songs. Chief among them are a lay by Walther von der Vogelweide, and the Great Hymn by Gottfried von Strassburg.
The latter is probably the finest of all the Minnelieder—worldly and sacred—of that period. Ranking next to these two there is, however, another poem to the Virgin, not to be classified strictly under the general title of Minnelieder, but still the production of a famous Minnesinger, and withal a poem of wondrous beauty, which for two centuries kept its hold upon the people. This is Konrad von Wuerzburg's Golden Smithy—a poem that is written in the metre of the narrative poem of that age, namely, in lines wherein every line ending in a masculine rhyme has four accentuations and every line ending in a female rhyme has three accentuations, the syllables not being counted—a metre that Coleridge has adopted in his poem Christabel.
In this Golden Smithy the poet represents himself as a goldsmith, working all manner of precious stones and gold into a glorious ornament for the Queen of Heaven, by gathering into his poem all possible images and similes from the world of nature, from sacred and profane history and fable, and from all the virtues and graces of mankind. It is a poem of wonderful splendor, and has a great smoothness of diction. "If," says the poet in the opening of the poem, "in the depth of the smithy of my heart I could melt a poem out of gold and could enamel the gold with the glowing ruby of pure devotion, I would forge a transparent, shining, and sparkling praise of thy worth, thou glorious empress of heaven. Yet, though my speech should fly upward like a noble eagle, the wings of my words could not carry me beyond thy praise; marble and adamant shall be sooner penetrated by a straw, and the diamond by molten lead, than I attain the height of the praise that belongs to thee. Not until all the stars have been counted and the dust of the sun and the sand of the sea and the leaves of the trees, can thy praise be properly sung."
But even this poem is far surpassed in beauty every way by Gottfried von Strassburg's Great Hymn. Indeed, Konrad himself modestly confesses this in his Golden Smithy, when he regrets that he does not "sit upon the green clover bedewed with sweet speech, on which sat worthily Gottfried von Strassburg, who, as a most artistic smith, worked a golden poem, and praised and glorified the Holy Virgin in much better strain."
There is, indeed, a wondrous beauty in this hymn of Gottfried von Strassburg, a beauty much akin to that of his own Strassburg Cathedral, which was begun about the same time.
"It is," says Van der Hagen, "the very glorification of love (Minne) and of Minnesong; it is the heavenly bridal song, the mysterious Solomon's Song, which mirrors its miraculous object in a stream of deep and lovely images, linking them all together into an imperishable wreath; yet even here in its profundity and significance of an artistic and numerously-rhymed construction; always clear as crystal, smooth and graceful."
The poem separates into three parts: in the first whereof the poet exhorts all those who desire to listen to his song of God's great love to endeavor to gain it by unremitting exertion; and furthermore to pray for him, the poet, who has so little striven to attain it for himself. In the second part, the poet calls upon the heavens and Christ to bend down and listen to his truthful lays in praise of Christ's sweet mother. Then in the third part begins the praise of the Virgin, followed by that of her Son, and the poem reaches its supreme fervor when it breaks out finally in praise of God himself. Thence it gradually lowers its tone, and finally expires in a sigh.