an incomparable clearness of the feeling. 'Personne, je crois, ne possède à l'égal de Verhaeren le don des lumières et des ombres, non point fondues, mais enchevêtrées, des noirs absolus coupés de blanches clartés.'[4] One-sidedness of temperament here produces a one-sided advantage with all its artistic restrictions. So that Verhaeren is not a verbal artist in the unrestricted sense of one who always hits upon the only, the inevitable comparison for a thing; of one who flashes a bold word on the attention once and never retails it till it palls, who seems to use every word for the first time. His poetic vocabulary is rich, but by no means infinite; his sensibility is strong, but it has its restrictions. For, as is the case with every passionate poet, certain feelings at the last white-heat of excitement appear to him identical, seem to him to be capable of comparison only with the quite elementary things of Nature, with fire, the sea, the wind, thunder and lightning. To make the point clear, Verhaeren is not a verbal artist in Goethe's sense, but rather in Schiller's sense. With the latter, too, he has the gift in common of definitely expressing certain perceptions in one lyric line. He has discovered essences of the lyric feeling of life, lines that are now household words, or which at all events will be so. It will be sufficient to mention word formations such as 'les villes tentaculaires,' which in France have already become common-places, or such maxims as 'La vie est à monter et non à descendre,' or 'Toute la vie est dans l'essor.' In lines like these the lyric ecstasy is compressed as in a coin, and perpetuated in the current riches of the language.