The third volume, _Les Heures du Soir_, has wonderfully closed the peaceful cycle with a series of poems, which no doubt have old age for their motive, but which show no trace of lassitude in the artist. Summer has turned to autumn, but how opulent and ripe this autumn is: the golden fruits of memory hang down and glow in the reflection of the sun that has been so well loved. Once again love passes with bright images: he is changed and purified, but as masterful and as strong as on the first day. I love these little poems of Verhaeren's with a different and no less a love than that I do his great and important lyric works. I have never been able to understand why these poems--for as far as the iconoclastic work is concerned, respect for tradition and fear of innovations may have scared many people away--have not enjoyed a widespread popularity. For never since the tenderly vibrating music of Verlaine's _La Bonne Chanson_, never since the letters of the Brownings, has wedded happiness been so marvellously celebrated as in these stanzas. Nowhere else has love been spiritualised so nobly, with such crystal purity, nowhere else has the synthesis of love and wedlock been more intrinsically fashioned. It is with a quite especial love that I love these _poèmes francs et doux_, for here behind the savage, ecstatic poet, the passionate and strong poet of _Les Villes Tentaculaires_, another poet appears, the simple, quiet, and modest poet, the gentle and kind poet, as we know him in life. Here, on the other side of the poetic ecstasy, we have the noble personality of Verhaeren, in whom we revere, not only a poetic force, but a human perfection as well. By the luminous gate of these frail poems goes the path to his own life. FOOTNOTES: [1] 'Le Paradis' (_Les Rythmes Souverains_). [2] 'Hommage' (_Au Bord de la Route_). [3] 'C'est la bonne heure où la lampe s'allume' (_Les Heures d'Après-midi_). [4] 'Avec mes sens, avec mon cœur et mon cerveau'. (_Les Heures d'Après-midi_). [5] 'Voici quinze ans déjà' (_Les Heures d'Après-midi_). [6] 'Les baisers morts des défuntes années' (_Ibid._) [7] 'Vous m'avez dit, tel soir' (_Les Heures d'Après-midi_). THE ART OF VERHAEREN'S LIFE Je suis d'accord avec moi-même Et c'est assez. É.V.