Morena’s Reviews > Medieval German Lyric Verse in English Translation > Status Update

Count Kraft von Toggenburg: strong and aggressive nobleman, involved in constant feuds with his neighbors. Now picture him return back to his keep after he's just burned down his neighbor's village, blood and screams still clinging to his armor... Once disarmed he sits at this desk and writes:
Flowers, foliage, hill and dale,
and the May-time summer-sweet delight
likened to the rose are pale
which my lady wears...

I saw the fairest in all the lands
and I can never sing of another now.
To her bright eyes and smooth, white hands,
wherever she may be, I'll always bow.
If with this shapely lady I might breed some children strong,
or just make love to her the whole night long!
Oho! But that would be too much: 't would be enough, if in her service I might sing my song
-- composed by Heinrich I, Count of Anhalt (c. 1170 – 1252)

When you bore the child you were undefiled, pure, as was God's plan, untouched by any man. Who thinks that such a thing cannot be true should look upon the glass, that's so like you. The beams of sunlight penetrate the glass and gleam and grow more radiant as they pass, through the glass into the house they flow and drive away the darkness as they go.