Morike withdrew from the social and political upheavals of his day to live as a reclusive country parson in his native Swabia. He is best known for his lyric poems which, in their directness, are close to folksongs. He also wrote a novel entitled Maler Nolten (Painter Nolten) (1832) and many short tales. The extreme simplicity of his diction and the subtlety of his rhythms render the work of Morike particularly difficult to translate. Largely for this reason he remains, despite his importance in German literature, little known to the English-speaking public, though his poems are scattered in various anthologies.