But he knows that she will impregnate him as well, give him power from her strength. There will never be a great man again who will pass her by, who will not be thrilled by her sensation, who will not live with her, and by her grow. Henceforth all new and strong men will stand in reciprocal action with her. This great recognition of a fact is, as we have seen, not spontaneous, but painfully acquired. For in the sense of the old beauty the aspect of a modern city is frightful. She is a sleepless, an ever wakeful woman; she does not, like Nature, sometimes rest; she is never silent. Restlessly she sucks men into her whirlpool; ceaselessly she pricks their nerves; day and night her life pulses. By day she is as grey as lead; a sultry shuttle of passions; a dark mine in which men, buried in the mines of her streets, are forced to unresting toil. How dense are these virgin forests of bronze and stone; and of all these thousands of streets 'à poumons lourds et haletants, vers on ne sait quels buts inquiétants,'[5] not one seems to lead into the open, into the light of day. Monotonous, like dull eyes, glare the millions of windows; and the darksome caverns in which men, themselves like machines, sit by machines, thunder in the unseizable rhythm of petrified exertion. Not a ray is reflected on them from the eternal; hostile, repulsive, and grey the town pants in the puffed smoke of her daily labour. But night, softening all harsh lines, fierily welds the lumbering limbs together into something new. By night the town is turned into one great seduction. Passion, fettered in the day-time, breaks its chains: ... Pourtant, lorsque les soirs Sculptent le firmament de leurs marteaux d'ébène, La ville au loin s'étale et domine la plaine Comme unnocturne et colossal espoir; Elle surgit: désir, splendeur, hantise; Sa clarté se projette en lueurs jusqu'aux cieux, Son gaz myriadaire en buissons d'or s'attise, Ses rails sont des chemins audacieux Vers le bonheur fallacieux Que la fortune et la force accompagnent; Ses murs se dessinent pareils à une armée Et ce qui vient d'elle encor de brume et de fumée Arrive en appels clairs vers les campagnes.[6] These fiery eruptions Verhaeren shapes in grandiose visions. There is the vision of the music halls: wheels of fire revolve round a house, blazing letters climb up façades and lure the crowds to sit in front of the brilliant footlights. I Here the people's hunger for sensation is fed full, and art is cruelly murdered day by day. Here tedium is tamed for an hour or so, and whipped up with colour, flame, and music for another pleasure that is waiting outside, as soon as the illusion here sinks into the night: Et minuit sonne et la foule s'écoule --Le hall fermé--parmi les trottoirs noirs; Et sous les lanternes qui pendent, Rouges, dans la brume, ainsi que des viandes, Ce sont les filles qui attendent....[7]