Lo! my frailties I’ve betrayed,
      Shown you every token,
    Told you what your servitors
      Have against me spoken;
    But of those men each and all
      Leave their sins unspoken,
    Though they play, enjoy to-day,
      Scorn their pledges broken.

    Now within the audience-room
      Of this blessed prelate,
    Sent to hunt out vice, and from
      Hearts of men expel it;
    Let him rise, nor spare the bard,
      Cast at him a pellet;
    He whose heart knows not crime’s smart,
      Show my sin and tell it!

    I have uttered openly
      All I knew that shamed me,
    And have spued the poison forth
      That so long defamed me;
    Of my old ways I repent,
      New life hath reclaimed me;
    God beholds the heart—­’twas man
      Viewed the face and blamed me.

    Goodness now hath won my love,
      I am wroth with vices;
    Made a new man in my mind,
      Lo, my soul arises! 
    Like a babe new milk I drink—­
      Milk for me suffices,
    Lest my heart should longer be
      Filled with vain devices.

    Thou Elect of fair Cologne,
      Listen to my pleading! 
    Spurn not thou the penitent;
      See, his heart is bleeding! 
    Give me penance! what is due
      For my faults exceeding
    I will bear with willing cheer,
      All thy precepts heeding.

    Lo, the lion, king of beasts,
      Spares the meek and lowly;
    Toward submissive creatures he
      Tames his anger wholly. 
    Do the like, ye powers of earth,
      Temporal and holy! 
    Bitterness is more than’s right
      When ’tis bitter solely.

XIV.

Having been introduced to the worshipful order of vagrants both in their collective and in their personal capacity, we will now follow them to the woods and fields in spring.  It was here that they sought love-adventures and took pastime after the restraints of winter.

The spring-songs are all, in the truest sense of the word, lieder—­lyrics for music.  Their affinities of form and rhythm are less with ecclesiastical verse than with the poetry of the Minnesinger and the Troubadour.  Sometimes we are reminded of the French pastourelle, sometimes of the rustic ditty, with its monotonous refrain.

The exhilaration of the season which they breathe has something of the freshness of a lark’s song, something at times of the richness of the nightingale’s lament.  The defect of the species may be indicated in a single phrase.  It is a tedious reiteration of commonplaces in the opening stanzas.  Here, however, is a lark-song.

WELCOME TO SPRING.

No. 6.