His _Barbarossa_ is found in almost
every reading book.
The cycle _Love's Spring_ is an imperishable monument to his love for
Louisa Wiethaus. But too many of the poems are dedicated to her and
too many inconsequential moods relating to her are recorded. In spite
of this, Rueckert has resolved the discord between every-day life and
poetry with the simplest poetic apparatus. Rueckert has also enriched
the German language with a mass of gnomic poetry, to the writing of
which he was led by his Oriental studies. This gnomic poetry (_The
Wisdom of the Brahman_) has been aptly said to recall at times the
ripeness of the mature Goethe and at other times--Polonius. Rueckert
was one of the first to introduce the Orient and its verse-forms
into German literature. Here the influence of Friedrich Schlegel
is unmistakable. He was also a master in the reproduction of the
complicated metres of the East and South. Though many of these
verse-forms have refused to become indigenous in Germany, a large
number of new words invented by Rueckert have had poetical vogue, and
even where the new formations were too bold or too _recherche_, they
accustomed German ears to a new idea-presentation through sound.
Rueckert, like the average Romanticist, lacked moderation in his
production, and was utterly without critical faculty in respect to
his own verse. Much that he has written has perished, but some of his
work--both original and translation--is a permanent part of the best
of German lyric verse.
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