And again when the lover is in pursuit of her, after she had built herself a lodge in what she thought a safe retreat; he does not know where she is, and his thoughts are so absorbed that he falls and puts out his shoulder, and then creeps into her vacant shelter:
"And he looked through a break in the lodge and saw the stars in the sky, and he saw one brighter than the rest, and he began to say:
'Pretty little star, I see Where the moon is leading thee. Nicolette is with thee there, My darling with the golden hair; God would have her, I believe, To make beautiful the eve.'"
Yet even here there is nothing of the deeper sensibility to midnight sky, common alike to ancient and modern seriousness. Yet we find notes also of this. It is hard, for example, to think of giving up the genuineness of Dante's letter refusing to return to Florence, if only for the rare touch of everywhere seeing the sun and the stars (_nonne solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam?_), that bears out such evidences as the last word of each of the divine canticles and other fine proofs that he felt the high wonder and peace of the stars at night. Who can doubt that he did--that every deep nature always has? Yet the poetical evidence for it is curiously scanty throughout these centuries. It is a surprise to come upon such an exclamation as this of Freidank's: "The constellations sweep through heaven as if they were alive,--sun, moon, the bright stars,--there is nothing so wonderful!"
Indeed, I can recall no writer to whom the material world seems to suggest such inner sensations as he who called himself Freidank, the German free-thinker. He was not much of a poet, so far as his verses go, but his soul knew life as mystery. He also made one of the band of reformers three centuries before Luther. He saw the corruption of the Church, yet he revered the sacred institution; in spite of his faith, he was a Christian rationalist. Some of his sentences almost startle us, as words before their season: "If the Pope can forgive sins by indulgence, without repentance, people ought to stone him if he allows any one to go to hell." "God is constantly shaping new souls, which he gives to men--to be lost. How does the soul deserve God's wrath before it is born?" He is haunted by the secret of life: "How is the soul made? No one tells me that. If all souls could be in a hand, none could see or grasp their glory." "Earth and heaven are full of the Godhead. Hell would be empty, were God not there." "Whatever the sun touches, the sunlight keeps pure. However the priest may be, the mass is still pure. The mass and the sunshine will always be pure." "I never cease wondering how the soul is made. Whence it came, and whither it fares--the path is hidden. Nay, I know not who I am myself.[4] Lord God, grant me that I may know thee, and also myself." So when Freidank hears the roar of the wind, its invisible might reminds his skepticism that the soul may well be great, though none can see it: while he watches the wide mist which no hand can seize upon, a symbolism of the soul comes to him again. He is oppressed by the restless energy of being: "Our hearts beat unceasingly, our breaths are seldom still:--and then, our thoughts and dreams!" As he rides through spring, he observes the infinite diversity of nature: