"Ah, Wehrmund, so skilled in song," sighed the knight, "how very, very old you have become since you invented your sweet lays on the banks of the Rhine!  Oh, I pray you, noble skald, call back to your remembrance how it then was with you, and whether you could have chanted such glorious songs, or done such valiant deeds with your sword, had it not been for those sweet pangs of love which filled your heart so softly with a pure joy and a pure sorrow for a noble lady who was then far distant from you, and has remained far distant all your life long!.." (Romantic Fiction: Select Tales from the German of De la Motte Fouqué &c., 1843).