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Culture of the Period 213
This is a didactic poem, in which Lady Pleasure
seeks to entice the Swedish youth into a life of sensu-
ous gratification. The youth is about to yield and fol-
low her, when Lady Virtue, faithful, noble goddess,
appears in garb
"Simple and plain, and pure, in a manner ancient and honest."
She turns the first step of the youth from the path
which leads to destruction, and prompts him to pursue,
in continuous toil, the rugged path of virtue to the
paradise of bliss.
Stiernhielm felt proud of belonging to Gustavus
Adolphus’ people and wanted to show the world that
his people could accomplish something of worth even
in the world of letters. Hence, with patriotic feeling
he placed on the title page of a collection of songs the
motto,
"The Muses now learning to write and to sing in the tongue
of the Northland."
Of this world’s goods Stiernhielm had little; sore
adversities he had to endure, yet was ever "glad and
jolly," as says one of his pupils. On his tombstone he
wished to have inscribed, "Vixit dum vixit laetus" (He
lived happy while he lived),
Olof Rudbeck. It was a notable day at Uppsala Uni-
versity when Queen Christina accompanied by a
brilliant group of statesmen, native and foreign schol-
ars, came to attend a certain learned discourse. The
lecturer was the twenty-two-year-old student Olof
Rudbeck, by whom a most remarkable scientific dis-
covery was reported to have been made. He had care-
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