story of Charlemagne and the magic stone given to him by a
grateful serpent. Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, 1. 130.

[221] We cite from an edition publ. at Leipzig, no date.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MINOR ORIENTALIZING POETS.

SOME LESS KNOWN POETS WHO ATTEMPTED THE ORIENTAL MANNER.

To enumerate the names of all the German poets who affected the Oriental
manner would be to give a list of the illustrious obscure. Most of them
have only served to furnish another illustration of Horace's famous
_mediocribus esse poetis_. A bare mention of such names as Loeschke,
Levitschnigg, Wihl, Stieglitz and von Hermannsthal will suffice.[222]
The last mentioned poet gives a striking illustration of the inanity of
most of this kind of work. He uses the _gazal_ form for stories about
such persons as the Gracchi and Bluecher,[223] and, what is still more
curious, for tirades against the Oriental tendency.[224] A poet of
different calibre is Daumer, whose _Hafis_ (Hamb. 1846) for a long time
was regarded as a translation, whereas the poems of the collection are
in reality original productions in Hafid's manner, just like Rueckert's
_Oestliche Rosen_.[225] Their sensuous, passionate eroticism, however, is
not a genuine Hafid quality, as we before have seen. The same criticism
applies even much more forcibly to Schefer's _Hafis in Hellas_ (Hamburg,
1853).[226] Special mention is due to the gifted, but unfortunate,
Heinrich Leuthold, whose _Ghaselen_ deserve to be placed by the side of
Platen's. Like Platen and Rueckert, he too proclaims himself a reveller:

Zur Gottheit ward die Schoenheit mir
Und mein Gebet wird zum Ghasel.--

But these _Ghaselen_ do not attempt to be so intensely Persian as to
reproduce the objectionable features of Persian poetry. Thus Leuthold
sings:

Vor allem ein Lebehoch dem Hafis, dem Patriarchen der Zunft!--
D'rum bringe die liebliche Schenkin das Gold gefuellter Becher
hinein![227]

Evidently the poet sees no necessity for retaining the _saqi_, but makes
the poem more acceptable to Western taste by substituting a "Schenkin"
for Platen's "Schenke."

The Oriental story was cultivated by J.F. Castelli. Many of the subjects
of his _Orientalische Granaten_ (Dresden, 1852) had already been used by
Rueckert. Another Oriental storyteller in verse is Ludwig Bowitsch, whose
_Sindibad_ (Leipzig, 1860) contains mostly Arabic material. Friedrich
von Sallet has written a poem on _Zerdusch