In the cloister, then, idyllic comfort, delighting in Nature and a quiet country life, was quite as much at home as scholarship and classical study.  But we shall look there in vain for any trace of the sentimental, the profoundly melancholy attitude of the Fathers of the Church, Basil and Gregory, or for Augustine’s deep faith and devout admiration of the works of creation:  even the tone of Ausonius and Fortunatus, in their charming descriptions of scenery, was now a thing of the past.  Feeling for Nature—­sentimental, sympathetic, cosmic, and dogmatic—­had dwindled down to mere pleasure in cultivating flowers in the garden, to the level Aachen landscape and such like; and the power to describe the impression made by scenery was, like the impression itself, lame and weary.

It was the night of the decline breaking over Latin literature.

And how did it stand with German literature up to the eleventh century?  A German Kingdom had existed from the treaties of Verdun and Mersen (842), but during this period traces of German poetry are few, outweighed by Latin.

The two great Messianic poems, Heliand and Krist, stand out alone.  In the Heliand the storm on the lake of Gennesaret is vividly painted: 

Then began the power of the storm; in the whirlwind the waves rose, night descended, the sea broke with uproar, wind and water battled together; yet, obedient to the command and to the controlling word, the water stilled itself and flowed serenely.

In Krist there is a certain distinction in the description of the Ascension, as the rising figures soar past the constellations of stars, which disappear beneath their feet; for the rest, the symbolic so supplants the direct meaning, that in place of an epic we have a moralizing sermon.  But there are traces of delight in the beauty of the outer world, in the sunshine, and sympathy is attributed to Nature: 

  She grew very angry at such deeds.

The poem Muspilli (the world fire) shews the old northern feeling for Nature; still more the few existing words of the Wessobrunner Prayer: 

  This I heard as the greatest marvel among men,
  That once there was no earth nor heaven above,
  The bright stars gave no light, the sun shone not,
  Nor the moon, nor the glorious sea.

How plainly ‘the bright stars’ and the ‘glorious sea’ shew joy in the beauty of the world!

In the oldest Scandinavian poems the inflexible character of the Northerner and the northern landscape is reflected; the descriptions are short and scanty; it is not mountain, rock, and sea which count as beautiful, but pleasant, and, above all, fruitful scenery.  The imagery is bold:  (Kenninger) the wind is the wolf of wood or sail, the sea the pathway of the whale, the bath of the diving bird, etc.

The Anglo-Saxon was especially distinguished by his forcible images and epithets.  In Rynerwulf we have ’night falls like a helmet, dark brown covers the mountains.’  ’The sky is the fortress of the storm, the sun the torch of the world, the jewel of splendour.’  ’Fire is eager, wild, blind, and raging; the sea is the gray sea, and the sparkling splendid sea; waves are graves of the dead,’ etc.