His first ambition was to be a painter; for a time he was a student of Gêrome in Paris. Critics have often recognized this quality of the painter’s skill in his poems, in selection of objects and colors and in reproduction of life in Paris, in Italian carnival days, and at Damascus. While Heidenstam was still a young man, he fell in love with a Swiss girl of the people and married her. At an old castle of Brunegg, estranged for a time from his parents, he lived in seclusion, seeing few people except his wife and August Strindberg who had become deeply interested in the young poet. Already he had decided that literature, not art, must be his profession. He wrote many poems that were gathered later as _Pilgrimages and Wander-Years_. In _Thoughts in Loneliness_ one may read expressions of his moods of longing for home, mingled with resentment against injustice. “Childhood Scenes” is an example, beginning: I’ve longed for home these eight long years, I know. I long in sleep as well as through the day! I long for home! I seek where’er I go, not men-folk, but the fields Where I would stray, The stones where as a child I used to play.[110] There are sundry references to his mother; a line that will arouse sympathy reads, She prayed my life might have a worthy goal![111] In the poem, “Fame,” he is melancholy and laments: You seek for fame but I would choose another And greater blessing: So to be forgotten That none should hear my name; No, not my mother.[112] The death of his father, in 1887, called him back to Sweden; here, with intervals of travel, has been his residence through his mature life. A volume of his _Poems_, following those of _Pilgrimages and Wander-Years_, increased his reputation among his countrymen. They were of diverse types; some were emotional like “A Man’s Last Word to a Woman”; others were scenic and dramatic narratives, like “The Forest of Tiveden” and “The Burial of Gustaf Fröding.” The lyrical quality in his songs adapts them to community singing; his “Sweden” is most familiar and has been compared by Mr. Stork to John Masefield’s “August, 1914.” The vibrant quality is strong; the patriotism is appealing: Oh, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, native Land! Our earthly home, the haven of our longing! The cow-bells ring where heroes used to stand, Whose deeds are song, but still with hand in hand To swear the eternal troth thy sons are thronging! In later poems, as well as prose essays, Heidenstam has shown ardent liberalism and a spirit of brotherhood. “Singers in the Steeple” emphasizes Not joy to the rich, to the poor men care; Our toil and our pleasure alike we share.