POEMS OF EMILE VERHAEREN. SELECTED AND RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BY ALMA STRETTELL. JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON & NEW YORK 1915. INDEX INTRODUCTORY NOTE From "LES VILLAGES ILLUSOIRES" RAIN THE FERRYMAN THE SILENCE THE BELL-RINGER SNOW THE GRAVE-DIGGER THE WIND THE FISHERMEN THE ROPE-MAKER From "LES HEURES CLAIRES" I. VIII. XVII. XXI. From "LES APPARUS DANS MES CHEMINS" ST. GEORGE THE GARDENS SHE OF THE GARDEN From "LA MULTIPLE SPLENDEUR" THE GLORY OF HEAVENS LIFE JOY INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Emile Verhaeren, remarkable among of the brilliant group of writers representing "Young Belgium," and one who has been recognized by the literary world of France as holding a foremost place among the lyric poets of the day was born at St. Amand, near Antwerp, in 1855. His childhood was passed on the banks of the Scheldt, in the midst of the wide-spreading Flemish plains, a country of mist and flood, of dykes and marshes, and the impressions he received from the mysterious, melancholy character of these surroundings, have produced a marked and lasting influence upon his work. Yet the other characteristics with which it is stamped--the wealth of imagination, the gloomy force, the wonderful descriptive power and sense of colour, which set the landscape before one as a picture, suggest rather the possibility of Spanish blood in the poet's veins--and again, his somewhat morbid subjectivity and tendency to self-analysis mark him as the child of the latter end of our nineteenth century.