In the dewy morning they gat them forth to the meadow where grass and flowers alike had been refreshed.  The glade was their pleasure-ground; they wandered hither and thither hearkening each other’s speech, and waking the song of the birds by their footsteps.  Then they turned them to where the cool clear spring rippled forth, and sat beside its stream and watched its flow till the sun grew high in the heaven, and they felt its shade.  Then they betook them to the linden, its branches offered them a welcome shelter, the breezes were sweet and soft beneath its shade, and the couch at its feet was decked with the fairest grass and flowers.

With these lovers, love of Nature is only second to love of each other.  So in the following: 

That same morning had Tristan and his lady-love stolen forth hand in hand and come full early, through the morning dew, to the flowery meadow and the lovely vale.  Dove and nightingale saluted them sweetly, greeting their friends Tristan and Iseult.  The wild wood birds bade them welcome in their own tongue ... it was as if they had conspired among themselves to give the lovers a morning greeting.  They sang from the leafy branches in changeful wise, answering each other in song and refrain.  The spring that charmed their eye and ear whispered a welcome, even as did the linden with its rustling leaves.  The blossoming trees, the fair meadow, the flowers, and the green grass—­all that bloomed laughed at their coming; the dew which cooled their feet and refreshed their heart offered a silent greeting.

The amorous passion was the soil in which, in its early narrow stages, sympathy for Nature grew up.  Was it the thirteenth-century lyrics, the love-songs of the Minnesingers, which unfolded the germ?  For the lyric is the form in which the deepest expression can be given to feeling for Nature, and in which she either appears as background, frame, or ornament, or, by borrowing a soul or symbolizing thought and feeling, blends with the inner life.

As the German court epics took their material from France, so the German love-songs were inspired by the Provencal troubadours.  The national differences stand out clear to view:  the vivid glowing Provencal is fresher, more vehement, and mettlesome; the dreamy German more monotonous, tame, and melancholy.  The one is given to proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm.  The stamp of the occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provencal work; while with the German Minnesingers, everything—­Nature as well as love—­tends to be stereotyped, monotonous.

The scanty remains of Troubadour songs[7] often shew mind and Nature very strikingly brought together, either in harmony or contrast.  For example, Bernard von Ventadour (1195): 

    It may annoy others to see the foliage fall from the trees, but
    it pleases me greatly; one cannot fancy I should long for leaves
    and flowers when she, my dear one, is haughty to me.