"And though the almanac Is wrong about the squall, The old salts lean their back Against the wall, And wait in rows together, Watching the sea and the weather." FOGS "You melancholy fogs of winter roll Your pestilential sorrow o'er my soul, And swathe my heart with your long winding sheet, And drench the livid leaves beneath my feet, While far away upon the heaven's bounds, Under the sleeping plain's wet wadding, sounds A tired, lamenting angelus that dies With faint, frail echoes in the empty skies, So lonely, poor, and timid that a rook, Hid in a hollow archstone's dripping nook, Hearing it sob, awakens and replies, Sickening the woeful hush with ghastly cries, Then suddenly grows silent, in the dread, That in the belfry tower the bell is dead." THE OLD MASTERS "In smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders, And with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocks Of hanging hams, black puddings, onions, bladders, Rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and cocks, Around a groaning table sit the gluttons Before the bleeding viands stuck with forks, Already loosening their waistcoat buttons, With wet mouths when from flagons leap the corks-- Teniers, and Brackenburgh, and Brauwer, shaken With listening to Jan Steen's uproarious wit, Holding their bellies dithering with bacon, Wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit. * * * * * "Men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting; Appetites ravening, and instincts rife, Furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting, Debauchery, explosion of rich life, In which these master gluttons, never sated, Too genuine for insipidities, Pitching their easels lustily, created Between two drinking bouts a masterpiece." Even amid the ruins of their country, Belgian writers, like the Belgian people, are indomitable. Verhaeren, from his retreat in London, sends out words that are a pæan of victory, and the bugle note of "Chantons, Belges, chantons!" by another author, is a call to great deeds in the future. CHAPTER XII MOTORING IN FLANDERS "O little towns, obscure and quaint, Writ on the map in script so faint, Today in types how large, how red, On battle scroll your titles spread!" Brussels is ideally located for the motorist. From it both the Flemish and the Walloon districts could easily be reached. To be sure, the towns were paved with the famous Belgian blocks, but the roads outside the towns were in excellent condition. One of our favourite trips was to Antwerp, where we went often, either to meet people landing from steamers from America or to look up boxes shipped us from home.