SOURCE: "Eric Johan Stagnelius," in The Poets and Poetry of Europe: With Introductions and Biographical Notices, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1893, p. 173.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1870, the American poet comments briefly on Stagnelius's career and cites a review that typifies the Swedish lyricist as a mystical, otherworldly poet.

The most signal specimen of a genius at once precocious and productive, which the annals of Swedish literature afford, is Stagnelius. He died at the age of thirty, but has left behind him three epic poems,—one of which, though never completed, was written at the age of eighteen,—five tragedies, and seven other dramatic sketches, and a very large collection of elegies, sonnets, psalms, ballads, and miscellaneous lyrics; making, in all, three large octavo volumes, written in the space of twelve years, and marked with the impress of a high poetic genius.

Stagnelius was the son of...