"Thy beautiful face by its grace explained to us a verse of the Qurān; for that reason there is nothing in our commentary but grace and beauty."
The opening lines of "Schmuck der Welt" (p. 260):
Nicht bedarf der Schmink' ein schönes Angesicht.
So bedarf die Liebste meiner Liebe nicht
are distinctly reminiscent of H. 8. 4:
زعشق ناتمام ما جمال يار مستغنيست
بآب و رنگ وخال وخط چه حاجت روی زيبا را
"Of our imperfect love the beauty of the beloved is independent. What need has a lovely face of lustre and dye and mole and line?"
Like Hāfiḍ (H. 358. 11; 518. 7 et passim) Rückert also boasts of his supremacy as a singer of love and wine ("Vom Lichte des Weines," p. 273). Finally in "Frag und Antwort" (p. 258) he employs the form of the dialogue, the lines beginning alternately Ich sprach, Sie sprach, just as Hāfiḍ does in Ode 136 or 194. The "Vierzeilen" (p. 361), while they have the rubāʻī-rhyme, are not versions. Only a few of them have an Oriental character. Completely unoriental are the "Briefe des Brahmanen" (p. 359), dealing with literary matters of contemporary interest.[151]
The Oriental studies which Rückert continued to pursue with unabated ardor were to him a fruitful source of poetic inspiration. They furnished the material for the great mass of narrative, descriptive and didactic poems which were collected under the titles Erbauliches und Beschauliches aus dem Morgenlande, and again Morgenländische Sagen und Geschichten, furthermore Brahmanische Erzählungen, and lastly Weisheit des Brahmanen. We shall discuss these collections in the order here given.
The first collection Erbauliches und Beschauliches (vol. vi.) consists of poems which were published between the years 1822 and 1837 in different periodicals. They appeared in collected form as a separate work in 1837.[152] The material is drawn from Arabic and Persian sources, only one poem, "Die Schlange im Korbe," p. 80, being from the Sanskrit of Bhartṛhari (Nītiś. 85).[153]