Poems of Emile Verhaeren

Poems of Emile Verhaeren

Emile Verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers representing "Young Belgium," and one who has been recognized by the literary world of France as holding a foremost place among the lyric poets of the day was born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, in 1855. His childhood was passed on the banks of the Scheldt, in the midst of the wide-spreading Flemish plains, a country of mist and flood, of dykes and marshes, and the impressions he received from the mysterious, melancholy character of these surroundings, have produced a marked and lasting influence upon his work. Yet the other characteristics with which it is stamped--the wealth of imagination, the gloomy force, the wonderful descriptive power and sense of colour, which set the landscape before one as a picture, suggest rather the possibility of Spanish blood in the poet's veins--and again, his somewhat morbid subjectivity and tendency to self-analysis mark him as the child of the latter end of our nineteenth century.

INDEX

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

From "LES VILLAGES ILLUSOIRES"

• RAIN
• THE FERRYMAN
• THE SILENCE
• THE BELL-RINGER
• THE SNOW
• THE GRAVE-DIGGER
• THE WIND
• THE FISHERMEN
• THE ROPE-MAKER

From "LES HEURES CLAIRES"

I.

VIII.

XVII.

XXI.

From "LES APPARUS DANS MES CHEMINS"

• ST. GEORGE
• THE GARDENS
• SHE OF THE GARDEN

From "LA MULTIPLE SPLENDEUR"

• THE GLORY OF THE HEAVENS
• LIFE
• JOY