Roman elegists and later epic poets that we meet a feeling for Nature which can be compared to his.  Like all the poets of this late period, his verse lacks form, is rugged and pompous, moving upon the stilts of classic reminiscences, and coining monstrous new expressions for itself; but its feeling is always sincere.  It was the last gleam of a setting sun of literature that fell upon this one beneficent figure.  He was born in the district of Treviso near Venice, and crossed the Alps a little before the great Lombard invasion, while the Merovingians, following in the steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty.  In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character.  His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with the inner life.

The lover’s wish in On Virginity,[34] one of his longer poems, suggests the Volkslieder: 

O that I too might go, if my hurrying foot could poise amid the lights of heaven and hold on its starry course.  But now, without thee, night comes drearily with its dark wings, and the day itself and the glittering sunshine is darkness to me.  Lily, narcissus, violet, rose, nard, amomum, bring me no joy—­nay, no flower delights my heart.  That I may see thee, I pass hovering through each cloud, and my love teaches my wandering eyes to pierce the mist, and lo! in dread fear I ask the stormy winds what they have to tell me of my lord.  Before thy feet I long to wash the pavement, and with my hair to sweep thy temples.  Whatever it be, I will bear it; all hard things are sweet; if only I see thee, this penalty is my joy.  But be thou mindful, for thy vows do I yearn; I have thee in my heart, have me in thy heart too.

This is more tender in feeling than any poem by Catullus or Tibullus.  We can only explain it by two facts—­the deepening of the inner life through Christianity (we almost hear Christ’s words about the ’great sinner’), and the intimate friendship which Fortunatus enjoyed with a German lady, who may justly be called the noblest and purest figure of her time in Franconia.

This was Radegunde, the unhappy daughter of a Thuringian king, who first saw her father’s kingdom lost, and then, fleeing from the cruelty of her husband, the bloodstained Chlotaire, took the veil in Poitiers and founded a convent, of which she made Agnes, a noble Franconian lady, the abbess.  When Fortunatus visited the place, these ladies became his devoted friends, and he remained there as a priest until the death of Radegunde.  His poems to them, which were often letters and notes written off-hand, are full of affection and gratitude (he was, by the way, a gourmet, and the ladies made allowance for this weakness in dainty gifts), and form an enduring witness of a pure and