A whole world now lies betwixt those who loved each other and who of old were never separate.  If others, for pity alone, cross the Alps to seek their lost slaves, wherefore am I forgotten?—­I who am bound to thee by blood?  Where art thou?  I ask the wind as it sighs, the clouds as they pass—­at least some bird might bring me news of thee.  If the holy enclosure of this monastery did not restrain me, thou shouldst see me suddenly appear beside thee.  I could cross the stormy seas in winter if it were necessary.  The tempest that alarms the sailors should cause no fear to me who love thee.  If my vessel were dashed to pieces by the tempest, I should cling to a plank to reach thee, and if I could find nothing to cling to, I should go to thee swimming, exhausted.  If I could but see thee once more, I should deny all the perils of the journey....

There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of feeling for his longer descriptions.  His very long and tedious poem about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts.  She left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where ’the mountains shining with snow reach to the stars, and their sharp peaks project over the rain clouds.’  In the same vein as Ausonius, when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for news: 

By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine:  with this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound.  Art thou silent, Gelesiuntha?  Answer as to thy sister stones and mountains, groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute.

In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of her sister’s safety all were silent.

Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with sympathy, but was a master in description of scenery.  His lengthy descriptions of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and there we find a really poetic idea.  For example: 

At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost, the field is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains stretch their leafy heads towards the sky, the shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine is swelling with budding branches, giving promise that a weight of grapes shall hang from its prolific stems.  While all joys return, the earth is dead and dull.

And: 

The soft violets paint the field with their own purple, the meadows are green with grass, the grass is bright with its fresh shoots.  Little by little, like stars, the bright flowers spring up, and the sward is joyous and gay with flecks of colour, and the birds that through the winter cold have been numb and silent, with imprisoned song, are now recalled to their song.

He describes the cold winter, and a hot summer’s day, when