"Bice is not well," he said to the doctor who was awaiting him. "I am anxious about her too. She knows nothing about it. I was afraid that the news the excitement - the journey - » "You are right. The marchesa's health must be carefully watched. It is a disease that runs in the blood, surely. I myself should not have assumed such a responsibility; and if it had not been for the gravity of the case "Is it very serious?" asked Roberto. The doctor made a motion with his head. The sick woman, as soon as her son-in-law's arrival was announced, became greatly agitated. "And Bice?" she asked as soon as she saw him, "why did she not come ? » He hesitated, grew as pale as she was, and felt a cold perspiration at the roots of his hair. "Have you been - did you tell her not to come?" she asked in a choked and broken voice. He had never heard that voice nor seen those eyes before. A woman, leaning over the pillow, endeavored to calm the invalid. Finally she relapsed into silence, closing her eyes, and convulsively clasping her hands over her bosom. Her last confession was made that evening. After she had partaken of the Communion she had her son-in law called in again, and she pressed his hand as if to ask his pardon. The vague odor of the incense still hovered in the room,the odor of death,-now and again overcome by the sharper odor of ether, penetrating and choking. Livid shadows seemed to wander over the face of the dying countess. "Tell her," murmured the poor woman, "tell my daughter- » She struggled with shortness of breath, which choked the words that she wanted to speak, and made her eyes roll as in delirium. Then she signified with a pitiful motion of her head that she could say no more. From time to time it was necessary to lift from the pillows her poor wasted body, in the supreme anguish of the death-agony. But she signified that Roberto was not to touch her. Her hair, which was white as snow, was in disorder. "No-no- » those were her last words, heard indistinctly murmured. She put up her hands to join together the nightrobe, which had opened at the neck; and thus with her hands folded she passed away. H T ÉMILE VERHAEREN (1855-1916) BY AMY LOWELL ELGIUM, which might well be thought to have plumbed the lowest depths of misfortune; Belgium, which is dying of want and misery in a darkness which we dare not penetrate lest we be overwhelmed with despair; Belgium has lost the one voice that was worthy and able to proclaim her distress and make it known to the world. . . «He stood for Belgium in every part of her being. The world has never seen, the world may seek in vain for, another poet who so truly embodied within himself the soul of a country. Flemish by birth and ancestry, Walloon, that is French, in mind and speech, he was indeed the twin-faced poet of this twin-headed people; yet his heart was single; and its singleness has been well proved.»> These are Maurice Maeterlinck's words, in an article written since the tragic death of his friend and confrère, Émile Verhaeren. Verhaeren and Maeterlinck stand as the two pinnacles of Belgian literature during the latter half of the nineteenth, and the first decade of the twentieth century. We think of Maeterlinck primarily as a dramatist, although he also writes poems; we think of Verhaeren primarily as a poet, although he also wrote plays. Together they are Belgium, the Belgium of vigorous, energetic materialism, no less than the Belgium of poetic mysticism. Maeterlinck represents the latter, but Verhaeren represents both. He does more, he is the very soul of the modern world. Belgians may point to him proudly as the embodiment of their nation, but we, who are not Belgians, recognize in him a greater universality. There is scarcely a side of the life of to-day upon which he does not touch. He is of the country and of the city; of imagination and of reality; of ideals and of gross fact. His is the temperament of the believer, and the mind of the agnostic. Profoundly touched by the thoughts and aims of modern times, he never loses sympathy with the charm of things old and half-forgotten. To quote another Belgian writer, Émile Cammaerts, he is «energy and dream.»> Other poets have pursued one or another of the ideals for which he strove, but in no other modern is so embracing an endeavor. His poems are rich in thought, but the thought is not permitted to usurp the place of poetry, for Verhaeren is always an artist. At the time when (Symbolisme) was flourishing in France, Ver haeren was already preoccupied with the modern sympathy of man for his fellows. He could not shut himself away from life. Men, welded into the corporate entity: Man, was to him all important. One of the younger French poets, Jules Romains, has written a book called Vie Unanime); Verhaeren's whole work might bear the same title. What he felt and acted upon, the next generation has tabulated. La The facts of Verhaeren's life, as we know them, are not of great importance; what is important is the reaction of his mind upon these facts, and that we have in his poems. Émile Verhaeren was born at Saint-Amand in East Flanders on May 21st, 1855. His father, Gustave Verhaeren, was the son of a cloth merchant of Brussels. His mother, a Mlle. Debock, was a native of Saint-Amand. Both families can be traced to different parts of Belgium in the eighteenth century, but there is reason to believe that the Verhaerens were originally Dutch, while the Debocks were certainly French. French was the language in which Verhaeren was brought up. After two years in a school in Brussels, the poet was sent to the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe in Ghent, from which institution he graduated at twenty, and returned to Saint-Amand for a year, taking a position in a large oil works owned by his uncle in that town. This business proving distasteful, the young man decided to study law, and matriculated at the University of Louvain, obtaining his degree in 1881. After a short time in the office of Edmond Picard in Brussels, Verhaeren abandoned the law in order to devote himself entirely to literature. He had already been a contributor to an ill-starred little paper, La Semaine, published by the undergraduates at Louvain, which was suppressed fifteen months after its foundation by the University authorities on account of its freedom of thought and expression. In 1883, Verhaeren published his first book, (Les Flamandes,> brilliant, vivid poems of Flemish life, done with the realistic touch which Zola was just making the fashion among the younger generation of Belgian writers. The book met with much opposition from the conservatives, but was warmly defended by Lemonnier in (L'Europe.) It was certainly an extraordinarily brilliant first book, but it represented only one side of Verhaeren's nature. It was the other side, the gentle, mystical side, which was given prominence in the poet's next book, (Les Moines, published in 1886. Before writing it, Verhaeren passed some time in the monastery of Forges near Chimay, in order to surround himself with the quiet atmosphere which the book demanded, and which it is possible he realized that he also needed. A period of wandering succeeded the publication of these books, during which Verhaeren went to France, Germany, Spain, and England. His mind was constantly at work upon the problems of existence, and so strenuous was the internal conflict that his health gave way for a time, and he suffered a severe nervous breakdown. During this illness, he lived in London, and some of his most interesting poems have London for their theme. The sombre state of his mind at that period found expression in (Les Soirs,) (Les Débâcles,) and Les Flambeaux Noirs published respectively in 1887, 1888, and 1890. In 1891, Verhaeren issued two volumes of poems: Les Bords de la Route, which dates from the time of Les Flamandes and (Les Moines,) and (Apparus dans mes Chemins, which marks the beginning of a new epoch in his literary career, and leads the way to the books of his great period: Les Campagnes Hallucinées,> 1893; Les Villages Illusoires, 1895; and (Les Villes Tentaculaires,) 1895. On his return to Belgium, he threw himself enthusiastically into active life, and became a convert to the Socialistic doctrines then stirring the country. He seconded M. Vandevelde and others in starting a democratic movement, and was for some time a member of the Comité de la Maison du Peuple. Some time before 1896, Verhaeren married, and a volume of lovepoems, Les Heures Claires,) was published in that year. This book is a series of three, which have appeared at long intervals, the second, (Les Heures d'Après-Midi,) being issued in 1905, and the third, Les Heures du Soir,) in 1911. His life from this moment is almost without incident, except for many journeys and the constant writing and publishing of books. Emile Verhaeren was a most prolific writer. His fecundity and energy were enormous. He wrote twenty-six volumes of poems, seven volumes of prose, and four plays. There is not space here to enumerate all these volumes in detail. I can only touch upon those which are the most important. Of the poems, the books already mentioned contain his most characteristic work, but four volumes of poems under the general title, Toute la Flandre, should be included in that estimate. They give not only charming and intimate pictures of his own boyhood, but are an epitome of Flemish life and custom. Unfortunately, as they were published by a Belgian firm, they are, at the time of writing, unprocurable. The other four volumes of poems issued before the war, La Multiple Splendeur,) (Les Visages de la Vie, Les Rhythmes Souverains,) and (Les Blés Mouvants, are more subjective and reflective in tone than his earlier books, although in Les Blés Mouvants) there is a return to the pictorial quality so marked in Les Villages Illusoires) and the other volumes of his middle period. His last collection of poems, (Les Ailes Rouges de la Guerre, is the outcry of a strong and terribly wounded man. The finest poem in the volume is the magnificent tribute to England, L'Angleterre,> one stanza of which will serve to show the brilliant symbolizing of a whole nation by means of visual images, and the undercurrent of emotion which surges through the poem: Sur tes places, au coin des rues A ton appel urgent se massaient les recrues; Redonnaient de l'orgueil aux âmes amoindries. Si bien qu'un jour, son île héroïque trembla Du long pas cadencé de quatre millions d'hommes. The beautiful poem to Rupert Brooke also printed in this book must stand, with his own last sonnets, as the young poet's most fitting epitaph. Verhaeren's best known play is Le Cloître, in which he returns to the theme of Les Moines.) It is written for male characters only and is partly in prose and partly in verse. (Hélène de Sparte) takes up the Greek story where Homer left it. Here we see Helen, weary, and ageing, longing for love not lust, and still pursued by the desire of men. In the end, she seeks refuge in the forest only to be again followed by fauns, naiads, and bacchantes, until she flees in despair to Zeus and death. This play was first published in translation in Leipzig under the title of Helena's Heimkehr.> It is curious and interesting to note that Verhaeren's prose books are largely critical essays upon painting monographs of the work of Joseph Heymans, Rembrandt, and Rubens. It has been justly said that every Fleming is at heart a painter. Even though Verhaeren's medium is words, he paints with them as truly as though he used pigments. What is a little poem like (La Cuisine) but a Flemish genre picture? Two other volumes of prose, (Fernand Khnopff, and (Les Lettres Françaises en Belgique, preceded the war, while one volume, (La Belgique Sanglante,) was written afterwards. This is a terrible book. The Dedication begins with these words: «Celui qui composa ce livre où la haine ne se dissimule point, était jadis un vivant pacifique. Il admirait bien des peuples; il en aimait quelques-uns.» Truly, La Belgique Sanglante) is a book of hate, of hate and painful disillusion. The man who believed so ardently in humanity has been |