# Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/A Theme With Two Variations

Many a man who quietly lays his head on the block has swooned at a prick under the finger-nail. Nekir and Munkar, the angels who record the actions of mankind, had every day unconcernedly made entry of the heaviest sins, but they were much startled and became almost pale with terror when once upon a time they heard a pious man on the threshold of Paradise thank God that He had protected him against frivolity, the commonest sin on earth. Since Nekir and Munkar were not fully agreed as to what he meant by this never-before-mentioned sin, they commanded the most frivolous man on earth to show himself.
So Don Juan came, guffawing and whistling. It was impossible to get a serious word from him, but a Jew to whom he had pawned his plate pointed at him and whispered in passing: "Dot man amuses himself all de time und iss shoost mad about pretty vimmen! Coot-bye!"
Nekir answered: "To use every hour of his short life is, as long as others don't suffer from it, no sin in our sight, though it may be in that of the narrow but possibly needful laws of men. It was not he whom we meant."
After that the Recording Angels repeated their command. Thereupon, timid and trembling, came ​Sheik Rifat Hassan, who died long ago. He knelt and sobbed: "Oh Munkar, I lived the first forty years of my life in such a whirl of pleasure that for the remaining forty I had to go about as a sick beggar."
Then answered Munkar: "My friend, to sacrifice the worst forty years of one's life in order to have double enjoyment from the best is no frivolity. That is taking life seriously."
After that the Recording Angels for the third time summoned the most frivolous man living. But no one answered. There was silence over all the earth.
For the fourth and fifth time they repeated the summons without answer. They only heard in the distance a lengthy, apathetic yawning, and a ridiculous, emaciated old man approached. He stood still and cried out insolently and defiantly: "What is it ye desire to know? Ask of me! I am Diogenes and am so wise that I scorn the pleasures of life."
Then answered Nekir: "In that thou deemest thyself wise, thou art a blockhead. In that thou failest to make use of well-tasting meat and drink, of beautiful furnishings and garments and all the trifles that in their measure gladden the short space of life, thou art frivolous."
Therewith Nekir dipped his pen and inscribed in his book the following: Number 5,989,700,402. Diogenes. The world's most frivolous man.
In one of the spreading valleys overgrown with peach-trees hard by Sana in Araby the Blest, Ildis, the Turkish governor's daughter, had wreathed a mighty garland. In her joy at the silent, limpid Oriental evening she resolved to present the garland to that man of Sana's inhabitants who best understood how to use the moment.
In her great childishness she asked the watchman at the city gate where she could find this man. He led her straightway to a writer of books. Who in Sana knew not the name of the writer of books? With hurried step he was going back and forth in his garden. Finally he stood still with an air of satisfaction and murmured: "At length I discern clearly wherein your charm consists, O evening of the Orient!" Thereafter he wrote on a slip of paper the following:
As soon as he had written down the last exclamation mark he sank down weary on a bench and went to sleep forthwith. Ildis looked at him and said: ​"As thou art a writer of books, it is thy fortune to be unfortunate. As thou art so unfortunate as to pluck apart every impression, thou dost rob thy life of all joy.—Let us go further!"
The watchman led her now to the market-place to a wealthy tallow-chandler. This man had passed his entire youth in a damp vault with his chandlery. His provision for the future had never won him a day's leisure. Still he was sitting on the steps of his house, evidently broken-down and in his dotage, but provided for.
Ildis shook her head and turned toward him. "My friend, when thou didst labor for the morrow, thou wert a self-betrayer, because even before night thou might'st have lain on a bier. When thou didst offer up thy youth for thy age, thou wert a spendthrift who bought pebbles for diamonds."
At last the watchman became impatient, shrugged his shoulders, and moodily retired, while his big slippers flapped on the stone pavement.
Night had already come on, and Ildis noted with alarm that she had arrived in front of the forbidding hovel which was inhabited by Muchail, the city swineherd, a giaour of ill-repute, on whom the writer of books had composed the following epigram:
​Ildis looked anxiously about her at the empty street. Through the half-open door she made out the handsome, curly-haired Muchail, a fellow of scarce twenty, who in the faintly lighted room was talking in a low voice with a friend. He cast two copper coins on the table and cried to his comrade:
"One coin shall be thine. I am but a poor swineherd, seest thou, but the little that I earn I always divide with my friends on condition that they immediately spend it. Do thou buy a little tobacco and wine, and I'll knock at the house of the dancing-girls. A piastre is only a fish-hook with which one catches a little much-sought-after goldfish that is called Happiness. While the others of the city quite absurdly hoard up fish-hooks, let us to-night catch the fish themselves!"
The maiden felt that she was red with blushes. She stepped back a couple of steps into the bright, glad southern moonlight which outlined her shadow on the door. She hesitated, cautiously thrust off her slippers, and finally, barefoot, stepped stealthily up on the stone threshold, hung the great garland on the key and kissed it. Then she took the slippers in her hand and sprang quickly away in the shadow of the houses as if she had done something wicked.