tigall, a lyric collection published after his death by one
of his confessional disciples. He gave it the curious
name Match-Nightingale, because "it matches itself
against all nightingales in sweet and delightful song,
and that, too, in truly poetic fashion." The character-
istic note of Spe's poetry is love of the Saviour borne in
upon the soul by the voices of nature, and expressing
itself in erotic imagery. The bride of Christ, "wounded
with a thousand sweet arrows," walks abroad in the
vernal wood and seeks her "fair hero, Jesus." His name
is echoed back to her by the zephyrs and the gurgling
brook. She implores her sister nightingale to "exhaust
her art " in calling Jesus to the arms of his longing bride.
A number of poems have the setting of the eclogue or
pastoral, the shepherds Damon and Halton vying with
each other in singing the praise of the Beloved. All this
sensuous eroticism and literary conventionality in deal-
ing with religious emotion are somewhat repellent to
more modern taste; the more so as the verse of Spe is
a monotonous repetition of the same scenery, thoughts,
feelings, images. Yet there is no reason to question his
sincerity, and some of the songs charm by their intimate
feeling for the aspects and messages of the outdoor world.
In his treatment of metre Spe, too, was a reformer, inde-
pendently of Opitz. His verse-forms are numerous, and
they flow smoothly. In his preface he observes that"the
quantity, that is, the length and brevity of the syllables
is generally taken from the accent; those syllables on
which the accent falls in ordinary pronunciation being
counted as long, the others as short."

One sees from the work of Weckherlin and Spe that
a tendency toward metrical reform was in the air. No
doubt it would have done its work in a short time even
if Opitz had never written his Book of German Poetry.

-181-