were modelled. A strong nature might use such with power, or break with their influence. Walther made his own the high convention of trouvère and troubadour, that love uplifts the lover's being. Besides this, and besides the lighter forms and phrases current in such poetry, his Lieder carry natural feeling, joy, and moral levity, according to the theme; they also may express Walther's convictions.
To take examples: Walther's Tagelied[1] imitates the Provençal alba (dawn), in which knight and truant lady bewail the coming of the light and the parting which it brings. Far more joyous, and as immoral as one pleases, is Unter der Linde, most famous of his songs. Marvellously it gives the mood of love's joy remembered—and anticipated too. The immorality is complete (if we will be serious), and is rendered most alluring by the utter gladness of the girl's song—no repentance, no regret; only joy and roguish laughter.
Walther was young, he was a knight and a Minnesinger; he had doubtless loved, in this way! His love-songs have plenty to say of the red mouth, good for kissing—I care not who knows it either. But he also realizes, and greatly sings, the height and breadth and worth of love the true and stable, the blessing and completion of two lives, which comes to a false heart never.[2] He seems to feel it necessary to defend love for itself, perhaps because marriage was taken more seriously in this imitative German literature than in the French and Provençal originals: "Who says that love is sin, let him consider well. Many an honour dwells with her, and troth and happiness. If one does ill to the other, love is grieved. I do not mean false love; that were better named un-love. No friend of that, am I." But his thoughts turn quickly to love as a lasting union: "He happy man, she happy woman, whose hearts are to each other true; both lives increased in price and worth; blessed their years and all their days."[3]
Giving play to his caustic temper, Walther puts scorn upon the light of love: "Fool he who cannot understand what joy and good, love brings. But the light man is ever
