the mood is that of Rubens and of Jordaens, those mighty revellers. But naturalistic art is pictorial, not poetic. And it is the great defect of this book that it was written by an inspired painter only, not yet by a poet. The words are coloured, but they are not free; they do not yet rock themselves in their own rhythm; they do not yet storm along to soar aloft with the inspiration; they are wild horses regularly trotting along in the shafts of the Alexandrine. There is a disparity between the inner intractability and the external regularity of these poems. The ore has not yet been molten long enough in the crucible of life to burst the hereditary mould. You feel that the avidity of life which is the substance of the work has really been seen 'à travers un tempérament,' that here a strong personality is in revolt against all tradition, a strong personality whose ponderous onslaught was bound to strike terror into the cautious and the short-sighted. But the strength and the art are not yet emancipated. Verhaeren is already a passionate onlooker, but he is still only an onlooker, one who stands without and not within the vortex, who watches everything with inspired sympathy, but who has not yet experienced it. This land of Flanders has not yet become a part of the poet's sensibility; the new point of view and the new form for it are not yet achieved; there is yet wanting that final smelting of the artistic excitement which is bound to burst all bonds and restrictions, to flame along in its own free feeling in an enraptured intoxication. FOOTNOTES: [1] 'Les Vieux Maîtres' (_Les Flamandes_). [2] 'Les Vieux Maîtres' (_Les Flamandes_). [3] 'Truandailles' (_Ibid._). THE MONKS Moines venus vers nous des horizons gothiques, Mais dont l'âme, mais dont l'esprit meurt de demain.... Mes vers vous bâtiront de mystiques autels. É.V., 'Aux Moines.'