productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as
ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever
renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1]

The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite
dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across
the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her
son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks
Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not
drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild
forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with
me--'tis your duty.'

Then the Spring greetings:

Now we go into the wide, wide world,
With joy and delight we go;
The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,
The flowers beginning to blow.
Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,
For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.

And:

What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring
From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;
While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around
Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?

This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting