But here the pictorial method proved to be I insufficient for the poetic effect. The problem of religious feeling is too close to the heart to be reached by outward, even by plastic manifestations. A thing which is so eminently hostile to the sensuous, nay, which is the very symbol of I all that is contrary to sensuousness, cannot be reached by a picturesque appeal to the senses; the description of an intellectual problem must cease to be descriptive and become psychology. And so, thus early in his career, Verhaeren is forced away from the picturesque. First, however, he attempts the plastic method: he gives us sombre statues of monks; but even as statues they are only types of an inner life, symbols of the ways to God. Verhaeren develops in his monks the difference of their characters, which are still effective even under the soutane; and by his delicate characterisation he shows the I manifold possibilities of religious feeling. The I feudal monk, a noble of ancient lineage, would make a conquest of God, as once his ancestors conquered castle and forest lands with spur and sword. The _moine flambeau_, he that is burning with fervour, would possess Him with his passion like a woman. The savage monk, he that has come from the heart of a forest, can only comprehend Him in heathen wise, only fear Him as the wielder of thunder and lightning, while the gentle monk, he that loves the Virgin with a troubadour's timid tenderness, flees from the fear of Him. One monk would fathom Him by the learning of books and by logic; another does not understand Him, cannot lay hold on Him, and yet finds Him everywhere, in all things, in all he experiences. Thus all the characters of life, the harshest contrasts, are jostled together, quelled only by the monastery rules. But they are only in juxtaposition, just as the painter loves all his colours and things equally, just as he places things in juxtaposition, without estimating them according to their value. So far there is nothing that binds them together inwardly, there is no conflict of forces, no great idea. Neither are the verses as yet free; they too have the effect of being bound by the strict discipline of the monks. 'Il s'environne d'une sorte de froide lumière parnassienne qui en fait une œuvre plus anonyme, malgré la marque du poète poinçonnée à maintes places sur le métal poli,'[1] says Albert Mockel, the most subtle of æsthetic critics, of the book. Verhaeren must himself have felt this insufficiency, for, conscious of not having solved his problems in terms of poetry, he has remoulded both aspects of the country, renewed both books in another form after many years: _Les Moines_ in the tragedy _Le Cloître, Les Flamandes_ in the great pentalogy _Toute la Flandre._