Paul Fleming is one of the most important German poets of the seventeenth century. His earliest poetry, much of it written in Latin, shows the usual stamp of rhetorical training at school and university; later, his German verse flourished under the influence of his main model, Martin Opitz. He used European conventions, such as the pastoral tradition, to good effect in his work, a good deal of which was written for occasions in the lives of his friends and acquaintances. His religious poetry combines intensity of expression with balance, while in his love poetry he fuses the Petrarchan tradition with a stress on Stoic fortitude, fidelity, and constancy, creating at times an immediacy of impact that is attractive to the modern reader. His sonnets are usually traditional in form, while in his songs he exploits a wide variety of verse lines and demonstrates a rhythmic facility that is...