Of the recent lyrical poets of Germany, one of the most distinguished, Friedrich Rückert, [39] is a religious as well as a secular poet, and with two of his poems we will wind up this long series of Christian singers. It began, a thousand years ago, with the monk whose great work was to present the Life of Christ to the German people in their own tongue; it ends with the modern lyric poet and scholar whose favourite study has been the wisdom of the Brahmins and Persians, and who yet finds that all these centuries have not exhausted the meaning that lies in Bethlehem and Calvary.