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Morike is greatest as a lyric poet. The gentle notes in his little volume of Gea'z'elzte in I 838, were, to be sure, drowned out by the thunder of the political poets; his homely sentiments could make no headway against the rush of enthusiasm for the tropical monsters of F reiligrath; and when this fever had abated somewhat, men sought refreshment rather, as Carl Weitbrecht1 says, in the trickling meadow-brooks of Geibel than in the hid den spring of Morike's verse. Nevertheless, it may be said that no German poet since Goethe wrote so nearly in the mas ter's spirit as this fellow-countryman of Schiller and Uhland. Morike did not, like the other Suabians, delight in ballads and the treatment of historical themes. He expressed more per sonal emotions, reacting on the experiences of his daily life, or uttering the thoughts which assumed plastic form while he wrote.
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