edermalm's gardens,
villas, streets, and church cupolas between the green trees: the ships
lie there together, so many and so close, with their waving flags. The
beautiful, that a poet's eye sees, the world may also see! Roll, ye
runes!

There sketches the whole varied prospect; a rainbow extends its arch
like a frame around it. Only see! it is sunset, the sky becomes
cloudy over Soedermalm, the grey sky becomes darker and darker--a
pitch-dark ground--and on it rests a double rainbow. The houses are
illumined by so strong a sunlight that the walls seem transparent;
the linden-trees in the gardens, which have lately put forth their
leaves, appear like fresh, young woods; the long, narrow windows in
the Gothic buildings on the island shine as if it were a festal
illumination, and between the dark firs there falls a lustre from the
panes behind them as of a thousand flames, as if the trees were
covered with flickering--Christmas lights; the colours of the rainbow
become stronger and stronger, the background darker and darker, and
the white sun-lit sea-gulls fly past.

The rainbow has placed one foot high up on Soedermalm's churchyard.
Where the rainbow touches the earth, there lie treasures buried, is a
popular belief here. The rainbow rests on a grave up there: Stagnalius
rests here, Sweden's most gifted singer, so young and so unhappy; and
in the same grave lies Nicander, he who sang about King Enzio, and of
"Lejonet i Oken;"[L] who sang with a bleeding heart: the fresh
vine-leaf cooled the wound and killed the singer. Peace be with his
dust--may his songs live for ever! We go to your grave where the
rainbow points. The view from here is splendid. The houses rise
terrace-like in the steep, paved streets; the foot-passengers can,
however, shorten the way by going through narrow lanes, and up steps
made of thick beams, and always with a prospect downwards of the
water, of the rocks and green trees! It is delightful to dwell here,
it is healthy to dwell here, but it is not genteel, as it is by
Brunkaberg's sand-ridge, yet it will become so: Stockholm's "Strada
Balbi" will one day arise on Soedermalm's rocky ground.

[Footnote L: "The Lion in the desert;" i.e. Napoleon.]

We stand up here. What other city in the world has a better prospect
over the salt fjord, over the fresh lake, over towers, cupolas,
heaped-up houses, and a palace, which King Enzio himself might have
built, and round about the dark, gloomy forests wit