Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/34

 never fails to make an attentive reader behold a landscape or grasp a dramatic situation. With a few impressionistic touches he both actualizes and individualizes a situation. Take, for example, the picture of a galley setting forth at sunset over the calm Mediterranean:

His imagery is extraordinarily direct and first-hand, as in

Whether it be a description of the Orient or the presentation of some complex spiritual emotion, Heidenstam's interpretative genius rises alike to the occasion in giving our senses the very feel of what he presents. As we have noted, he never rejects a homely or even a grotesque figure if it suits his purpose, as in the comparison of Jerusalem with its walls and cupolaed houses to a basket of eggs. In imagery Heidenstam ranks with the greatest poets and need not even shun comparison with Dante.

In his verse-form Heidenstam, like Browning, lets his verbal music be too much overruled by his substance. He sticks almost always to rhyme and to a regular metric foot, but his variation of stanza-scheme and of the length of his line is at times confusing and rather too casual. One would like to