It was about that time of the year when departing winter sheds his last terrors upon the earth; a sharp breeze was blowing and the sea was covered with broken up ice; but there were gleams of sunshine upon the hills, and the little birds began to tune their throats tremulously, that they might be ready to sing their lay when the March weather was past.

    Gudrun trembled with cold; her wet garment clung close to her
    white limbs; the wind dashed her golden hair about her face.

And later, when the morning of Gudrun’s deliverance breaks, the indications of time, though short, are plastic enough: 

After the space of an hour the red star went down upon the edge of the sea, and Wat of Sturmland, standing upon the hill, blew a great blast on his horn, which was heard in the land for miles round....  The sound of Wat’s horn ... wakened a young maid, who, stealing on tiptoe to the window, looked over the bay and beheld the glimmering of spears and helms upon the sands....  ’Awake, mistress,’ she cried, ‘the host of the Hegelings is at hand.’

Companions are few;

  He sprang like a wild lion.

The shower of stones flung down upon Wat ‘is but an April shower.’

Images are few too: 

    This flower of hope, to find repose here on the shore, Hartmouth
    and his friends did not bring to blossom.

Wilhelm Grimm rightly observes: 

At this epoch the poetry of the Fatherland gave no separate descriptions of Nature—­descriptions, that is, whose only object was to paint the impression of the landscape in glowing colours upon the mind.  The old German masters certainly did not lack feeling for Nature, but they have left us no other expression of it than such as its connection with historical events demanded.

And further: 

The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or, through the Crusades, with Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, did not enrich German poetry with new pictures of Nature, can only, as a general rule, be answered in the negative.

In the courtly epics of chivalry, the place of real Nature was taken by a fabulous wonderworld, full of the most fantastic and romantic scenery, in which wood, field, plants, and animals were all distorted.  For instance, in the Alexander saga (of Pfaffen Lamprecht) Alexander the Great describes to his teacher Aristotle the wonders he has seen, and how one day he came with his army to a dark forest, where the interlacing boughs of tall trees completely shut out the sunlight.  Clear, cool streams ran through it down to the valley, and birds’ songs echoed in the shade.  The ground was covered by an enormous quantity of flower buds of wondrous size, which looked like great balls, snow-white and rose-coloured, closely folded up.  Presently, the fragrant goblets opened, and out of all these wonder-flowers stepped lovely maidens, rosy