Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/23

 present home stands the castle of Vadstena, built by Gustaf Vasa. It is here, in the midst of ancestral traditions, that Heidenstam has been living for the past thirty years.

As a boy the poet was shy and a great reader, especially of poetry and battle stories. Like Roosevelt he was an admirer of Topelius, as well as of the narrative poets Tegnér and Runeberg, and the dramatic, but rather overstrained lyrist, Lidner. At school he was fondest of Latin and geography. When sixteen years old he had a nervous illness and by the doctor's advice was sent to the South, where he sojourned mainly in Italy, Greece, and the Orient, His wanderings lasted many years with occasional visits home, during one of which he was married. Finally, impressed by the visual beauty of the scenes in which he lived, Heidenstam resolved to become a painter and, despite the dissuasion of his family, went to Paris and studied for a time under GeromeGérôme [sic]. Though he enjoyed the care-free life he was dissatisfied with being only able, as he felt, to touch the surface of things.

He longed for home but, having become estranged from his family, he was obliged to remain an exile. In a fit of discouragement he isolated himself from the world at the old castle of Brunegg in Switzerland. Here he saw no one but his wife and occasionally Strindberg. At last, however, his real talent came to light, and amid these gloomy surroundings Heidenstam composed a series of dramatic poems and