The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems of Emile Verhaeren, by Emile Verhaeren

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Title: Poems of Emile Verhaeren

Author: Emile Verhaeren

Illustrator: John S. Sargent

Translator: Alma Strettell

Release Date: September 21, 2010 [EBook #33792]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS OF EMILE VERHAEREN ***

Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org

POEMS

OF

EMILE VERHAEREN.

SELECTED AND RENDERED INTO ENGLISH

BY

ALMA STRETTELL.

JOHN LANE
THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON & NEW YORK

1915.

INDEX

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

From "LES VILLAGES ILLUSOIRES"

RAIN
THE FERRYMAN
THE SILENCE
THE BELL-RINGER
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 HEAVENS
LIFE
JOY

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

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.

Verhaeren entered early in life upon the literary career. After some
time spent at a college in Ghent, he became a student at the University
of Louvain, and here he founded and edited a jou