Manesse Codex (1305-1340), copied and illustrated in Zurich. It contains German love songs, by important poets, some of whom were famous rulers.
The Sick Rose
Collection: Songs of Experience
~William Blake (1794)
O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Goethe wrote a poem for Marianne von Willemer, the wife of a Frankfurt banker, using the Gingko tree as symbol of his friendship with her. The Gingko tree, which inspired Goethe (planted in 1795), stood in the garden of Heidelberg Castle, and it is from this tree that he pasted the two leaves shown in the poem written in his hand, above.
Ginkgo Biloba (1815, translated)
This tree’s leaf, which here the East
In my garden propagates,
On its secret sense we feast
Such as sages elevates.
Is it but one being single
Which as same itself divides?
Are there two which choose to mingle
So that one each other hides?
As the answer to such question
I have found a sense that’s true:
Is it not my songs’ suggestion
That I’m one and also two?
