She is my summer joy, she sows flowers and clover
  In my heart’s meadow, whence I, whate’er befall,
  Must teem with richer bliss:  the light of her eyes
  Makes me bloom, as the hot sun the dripping trees.... 
  Her fair salute, her mild command
  Softly inclining, make May rain drop down into my heart.

Heinrich von Rugge laments winter: 

    The dear nightingale too has forgotten how beautifully she sang
    ... the birds are mourning everywhere.

and longs for summer: 

    I always craved blissful days....  I liked to hear the little
    birds’ delightful songs.  Winter cannot but be hard and
    immeasurably long.  I should be glad if it would pass away.

Heinrich von Morungen: 

  How did you get into my heart? 
  It must ever be the same with me. 
  As the noon receives her light from the sun,
  So the glance of your bright eyes, when you leave me,
  Sinks into my heart.

He calls his love his light of May, his Easter Day: 

  She is my sweetheart, a sweet May
  Bringing delights, a sunshine without cloud.

and says, in promising fidelity:  ’My steady mind is not like the wind.’

Reinmar says: 

  When winter is over
  I saw the heath with the red flowers, delightful there.... 
  The long winter is past away; when I saw the green leaves
  I gave up much of my sorrow.

In a time of trouble he cried: 

    To me it must always be winter.

So we see that Troubadour references to Nature were drawn from a very limited area.  Individual grasp of scenery was entirely lacking, it did not occur to them to seek Nature for her own sake.  Their comparisons were monotonous, and their scenes bare, stereotyped arabesques, not woven into the tissue of lyric feeling.  Their ruling motives were joy in spring and complaint of winter.  Wood, flowers, clover, the bright sun, the moon (once), roses, lilies, and woodland birds, especially the nightingale, served them as elementary or landscape figures.

Wilhelm Grimm says: 

The Minnesingers talk often enough of mild May, the nightingale’s song, the dew shining on the flowers of the heath, but always in relation only to their own feelings reflected in them.  To indicate sad moods they used faded leaves, silent birds, seed buried in snow.

and Humboldt: 

The question, whether contact with Southern Italy, or the Crusades in Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, have enriched the art of poetry in Germany with new natural pictures, can only generally be answered by the negative.  It is not remarked that the acquaintance with the East gave any new direction to the songs of the minstrels.  The Crusaders came little into actual contact with the Saracens; they even lived in a state of great restraint with other nations who fought in the