The Silesian poet Daniel Czepko is one of the most significant figures in seventeenth-century German literature, but only in the last few decades of the twentieth century have literary historians become fully aware of the high level of his linguistic skill, his mastery of the formal aspects of writing, and the intellectual independence manifest in his poetic, religious, and political ideas. This late recognition is because of the way his work was passed on. Aside from the play Pierie (1636), only eighteen relatively insignificant occasional poems were published during his lifetime because he was always in conflict with the censors. The bulk of his work was spread in manuscript form in copies made by friends or scribes; all of the originals are lost. Some of these works were published for the first time in the early 1930s as Geistliche Schriften (Spiritual Writings, 1930) and Weltliche Dichtungen (Worldly Poems, 1932). Some of...