To rank the two national epics of Germany, the _Nibelungenlied_ and _Gudrun_, side by side with the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is to exaggerate their value. And here, as ever, overstraining the comparison is mischievous. The _Nibelungenlied_ is undeniably charming with its laconic and yet plastic descriptions, its vigorous heroes, and the tragic course of their fate; so is _Gudrun_, that melodious poem of the North Sea. But they never, either in composition, method of representation, or descriptive epithets, reach the perfect art of the Greek epics. What moral beauty and plastic force there is in Homer's comparisons and in his descriptions of times and seasons! what a clear eye and warm heart he has for Nature in all her moods! and what raw and scanty beginnings of such things we have in the _Nibelungenlied_! It is true Homer had not attained to the degree of sympathy which finds in Nature a friend, a sharer of one's joys and sorrows; she is pictured objectively in the form of epic comparisons; but how faithfully, and with what range and variety! There can scarcely be another epic in the world so poor in descriptions of time and place as the _Nibelungenlied_; it cannot be used to prove German feeling for Nature! India, Persia, and Greece made natural phenomena the counterparts of human life, weaving into the tale, by way of comparison or environment, charming genre pictures of plant and animal life, each complete in itself; in the _Nibelungenlied_ Nature plays no part at all, not even as framework. Time is indicated as sparsely as possible: 'Upon the 7th day at Worms on the Rhine shore, the gallant horsemen arrived.' 'On a Whitsun morning we saw them all go by'; or 'When it grew towards even, and near the sun's last ray, seeing the air was cooler'; or 'He must hang, till light morning threw its glow through the window.' The last is the most poetic; elsewhere it is 'Day was over, night fell.' Terseness can be both a beauty and a force; but, in comparison with Greece, how very little feeling for Nature these expressions contain! It is no better with descriptions of place: 'From the Rhine they rode through Hesse, their warriors as well, towards the Saxon country, where they to fighting fell.' 'He found a fortress placed upon a mountain.' 'Into a wide-roomed palace of fashion excellent, for there, beneath it rushing, one saw the Danube's flood.' Even the story of the hunt and the murder of Siegfried is quite matter-of-fact and sparse as to scenery: 'By a cold spring he soon lost his life ... then they rode from there into a deep wood ... there they encamped by the green wood, where they would hunt on the broad mead ... one heard mountain and tree echo.' 'The spring of water was pure and cool and good.' ... 'There fell Chriemhild's husband among the flowers ... all round about the flowers were wetted with his blood.'