In these verses we have the conclusive proof that he now both understood and felt poetry "in another sense" from that in which he had hitherto understood and felt it.

Through them we feel the breath of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his invention to make poetic compliments to Kaethchen Schoenkopf.

In the intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace all the new poetic influences which he had come under in Strassburg--Shakespeare, Ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration of Herder.

What is remarkable in these early lyrics, however, is that though they vibrate with the emotion of the poet, the emotion is under strict restraint and never passes into the watery effusiveness which is the inherent sin of so much German lyrical poetry.

That "brevity and precision" which was the ideal he now put before him he had attained at one bound, and in none of his later work did he exemplify it in greater perfection.