Thou Elect of fair Cologne, Listen to my pleading! Spurn not thou the penitent; See, his heart is bleeding! Give me penance! what is due For my faults exceeding I will bear with willing cheer, All thy precepts heeding. Lo, the lion, king of beasts, Spares the meek and lowly; Toward submissive creatures he Tames his anger wholly. Do the like, ye powers of earth, Temporal and holy! Bitterness is more than's right When 'tis bitter solely. XIV. Having been introduced to the worshipful order of vagrants both in their collective and in their personal capacity, we will now follow them to the woods and fields in spring. It was here that they sought love-adventures and took pastime after the restraints of winter. The spring-songs are all, in the truest sense of the word, _lieder_--lyrics for music. Their affinities of form and rhythm are less with ecclesiastical verse than with the poetry of the Minnesinger and the Troubadour. Sometimes we are reminded of the French _pastourelle_, sometimes of the rustic ditty, with its monotonous refrain. The exhilaration of the season which they breathe has something of the freshness of a lark's song, something at times of the richness of the nightingale's lament. The defect of the species may be indicated in a single phrase. It is a tedious reiteration of commonplaces in the opening stanzas. Here, however, is a lark-song. WELCOME TO SPRING. No. 6. Spring is coming! longed-for spring Now his joy discloses; On his fair brow in a ring Bloom empurpled roses! Birds are gay; how sweet their lay! Tuneful is the measure; The wild wood grows green again, Songsters change our winter's pain To a mirthful pleasure. Now let young men gather flowers, On their foreheads bind them, Maidens pluck them from the bowers, Then, when they have twined them, Breathe perfume from bud and bloom, Where young love reposes, And into the meadows so All together laughing go, Crowned with ruddy roses. Here again the nightingale's song, contending with the young man's heart's lament of love, makes itself heard. THE LOVER AND THE NIGHTINGALE. No. 7. These hours of spring are jolly; Maidens, be gay! Shake off dull melancholy, Ye lads, to-day! Oh! all abloom am I! It is a maiden love that makes me sigh, A new, new love it is wherewith I die! The nightingale is singing So sweet a lay! Her glad voice heavenward flinging-- No check, no stay. Flower of girls love-laden Is my sweetheart; Of roses red the maiden For whom I smart. The promise that she gives me Makes my heart bloom; If she denies, she drives me Forth to the gloom.