Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/71



Among many partly damaged Arabic manuscripts which Abu Barak, the book-seller, sat and spelled out by the light of his horn lantern, the uppermost had the following tenor:

Damascus, in the third year of Caliph Osman's reign and the forty-first after his birth. May the One grant to him and to all of you a peaceful year!

I can respect, perhaps even admire the man who lives according to rule, who is looked upon as a pattern, who even from his earliest youth falls into a given path, and dutifully and composedly follows it until he dies, surrounded by well-nurtured children. When I talk with him, however, it is as though I conversed with a very inexperienced and one-sided person. He has never been in a condition to test life from many sides. He has never by a violent impulse cast aside a piece of work already begun and attempted something new. The fickle man, on the contrary, because of frequently giving himself with renewed zeal to new enterprises, gains an assured experience in all, a rich versatility. I love the fickle man. His changes of mood remind me of the changing facets of a jewel. His conversation delights my ear in the same way as the gay arabesques in the mosque of Ispahan delight my eye. It is as though his mind were constructed of finer and more sensitive material than those of others. If he advances an opinion to-day, he will perhaps