It must not be thought that these poets write only religious poems. They have, indeed, produced such masterpieces of devotional verse as Braun’s _Livre des Bénédictions_ and Ramaekers’ _Le Chant des Trois Regnes_. But when their poetry is not religious it is not, at any rate, irreligious; they “utter nothing base.” And surely even the lightest of secular poems may do its author’s Catholicism no discredit. As Francis Thompson said of poetry in the eloquent appeal to the “fathers of the Church, pastors of the Church, pious laics of the Church” with which his most famous essay begins, “Eye her not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird gives glory to God though it sings only of its own innocent loves.... Suffer her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot of the Cross!” Indeed, what is true of much modern English verse is true also of that of Belgium, there are Catholic poets who seldom in their work refer directly to their faith, and there are infidel poets who have laid impious hands on the Church’s treasures and decorate their rhymes with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names of the Saints. So we find, for example, Emile Verhaeren using the first chapters of Genesis as the theme of a poem that is anything but edifying, while that pious Catholic, Thomas Braun, writes a volume of verses about postage stamps. There are certain optimistic persons who believe that the general use in literature of sacred names and traditions augurs well for the spread of faith. A member of an Anglican religious order, who two years ago delivered a series of lectures in New York City, prophesied a mighty recrudescence of religion among the poets of England, and based his prophecy, apparently, on the fact that Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie and other brilliant young writers have made ballads out of some of the most picturesque of the legends about the Saints. He did not see that Mr. Abercrombie selected his themes solely because of their literary value. There are many poets who eagerly avail themselves of the stores which are the Church’s heritage, who introduce the name of the Blessed Virgin into their verses exactly as they would introduce that of Diana, or Venus or any creature of fable. Personally, I have never been able to enjoy the recital, however skillful, of a sacred story by a poet who did not believe in it, and therefore I cannot grow enthusiastic over the knowledge that many Belgian poets, whose philosophies are hostile to the Church, like to write about monstrances and chalices and altars, and to tell ostentatiously “human” stories about sacred people in general and St. Mary Magdalen in particular. I find Thomas Braun’s poems about postage stamps more edifying.