guessed, I took but little part. It was rather a monologue on the
subject of Arabic poetry, full of the clearest and richest knowledge,
and sparkling with those evanescent felicities of diction which can so
rarely be recalled. I was charmed out of all sense of time, and was
astonished to find, when tea appeared, that more than two hours had
elapsed. The student had magnanimously left me to the poet, devoting
himself to the good Frau Rueckert, the "Luise" of her husband's
_Liebesfruehling_ (Spring-time of Love). She still, although now a
grandmother, retained some traces of the fresh, rosy beauty of her
younger days; and it was pleasant to see the watchful, tender interest
upon her face, whenever she turned towards the poet. Before I left, she
whispered to me, "I am always very glad when my husband has an
opportunity to talk about the Orient: nothing refreshes him so much."

But we must not lose sight of Rueckert's poetical biography. His first
volume, entitled "German Poems, by Freimund Raimar," was published at
Heidelberg in the year 1814. It contained, among other things, his
famous _Geharnischte Sonette_ (Sonnets in Armor), which are still read
and admired as masterpieces of that form of verse. Preserving the
Petrarchan model, even to the feminine rhymes of the Italian tongue, he
has nevertheless succeeded in concealing the extraordinary art by which
the difficult task was accomplished. Thus early the German language
acquired its unsuspected power of flexibility in his hands. It is very
evident to me that his peculiar characteristics as a poet sprang not so
much from his Oriental studies as from a rare native faculty of mind.

These "Sonnets in Armor," although they may sound but gravely beside the
Tyrtaean strains of Arndt and Koerner, are nevertheless full of stately
and inspiring music. They remind one of Wordsworth's phrase,--

"In Milton's hand,
The thing became a trumpet,"--

and must have had their share in stimulating that national sentiment
which overturned the Napoleonic rule, and for three or four years
flourished so greenly upon its ruins.

Shortly afterwards, Rueckert published "Napoleon, a Political Comedy,"
which did not increase his fame. His next important contribution to
general literature was the "Oriental Roses," which appeared in 1822.
Three years before, Goethe had published his _Westoestlicher Divan_, and
the younger poet dedicated his first venture in the same field to h