the perils of the journey....

There is little about Nature in this beautiful avowal of love and
longing, but the whole colouring of the mood forms a background of
feeling for his longer descriptions. His very long and tedious poem
about the bridal journey of Gelesiuntha, the Spanish princess, who
married King Chilperic, shews deep and touching feeling in parts. She
left her Toledo home with a heavy heart, crossing the Pyrenees, where
'the mountains shining with snow reach to the stars, and their sharp
peaks project over the rain clouds.' In the same vein as Ausonius,
when he urged Paulinus to write to him, she begs her sister for news:

By thy name full oft I call thee, Gelesiuntha, sister mine: with
this name fountains, woods, rivers, and fields resound. Art thou
silent, Gelesiuntha? Answer as to thy sister stones and
mountains, groves and waters and sky, answer in language mute.

In troubled thought and care she asked the very breezes, but of her
sister's safety all were silent.

Fortunatus, like Ausonius, not only looked at Nature with sympathy,
but was a master in description of scenery. His lengthy descriptions
of spring are mostly only decorative work, but here and there we find
a really poetic idea. For example:

At the first spring, when earth has doffed her frost,
the field is clothed with variegated grass; the mountains
stretch their leafy heads towards the sky, the
shady tree renews its verdant foliage, the lovely vine
is swelling with budding branches, giving promise that