True melody, it must be remembered, is unknown, at least at present,
in the tropics, and peculiar to the races of those temperate climes,
into which the song-birds come in spring. It is hard to say why.
Exquisite songsters, and those, strangely, of an European type, may
be heard anywhere in tropical American forests: but native races
whose hearts their song can touch, are either extinct or yet to come.
Some of the old German Minnelieder, on the other hand, seem actually
copied from the songs of birds. 'Tanderadei' does not merely ask the
nightingale to tell no tales; it repeats, in its cadences, the
nightingale's song, as the old Minnesinger heard it when he nestled
beneath the lime-tree with his love. They are often almost as
inarticulate, these old singers, as the birds from whom they copied
their notes; the thinnest chain of thought links together some bird-
like refrain: but they make up for their want of logic and
reflection by the depth of their passion, the perfectness of their
harmony with nature. The inspired Swabian, wandering in the pine-
forest, listens to the blackbird's voice till it becomes his own
voice; and he breaks out, with the very carol of the blackbird
'Vogele im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
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