• In the Middle Ages the longing for rest and escape from danger, which found its expression in cloisters, is expressed in poetry by descriptions of flowery, secluded meadows, suggesting the classic meadows of asphodel. Dante has given one already in the Inferno, and gives another here. Compare with these the following from The Miracles of Our Lady , by Gonzalo de Bercéo, a monk of Calahorra, who lived in the thirteenth century, and is the oldest of the Castilian poets whose name has come down to us:⁠— “I, Gonzalo de Bercéo, in the gentle summer-tide, Wending upon a pilgrimage, came to a meadow’s side; All green was it and beautiful, with flowers far and wide, A pleasant spot, I ween, wherein the traveller might abide. Flowers with the sweetest odors filled all the sunny air, And not alone refreshed the sense, but stole the mind from care; On every side a fountain gushed, whose waters pure and fair Ice-cold beneath the summer sun, but warm in winter were. There on the thick and shadowy trees, amid the foliage green, Were the fig and the pomegranate, the pear and apple seen, And other fruits of various kinds, the tufted leaves between; None were unpleasant to the taste and none decayed, I ween.