"Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns? I have been changed to a hound with one red ear; I have been in the path of stones and the wood of thorns, For somebody hid hatred, and hope, and desire, and fear Under my feet that they follow you night and day." From 1889 to 1896 Maeterlinck wrote many poems and eight plays. His first play, "La Princesse Maleine," was a masterpiece, and is said to have made an "epoch in the history of the stage." The author was named the Belgian Shakespeare. Many of his plays, however, have a fairy-like and unreal quality, so they have been termed "bloodless" or unhealthy. A short synopsis of "La Princesse Maleine" will give an idea of the plot. The scene opens at the betrothal banquet of the young Princess Maleine. The fathers of the two young people quarrel over the arrangements. The betrothal is broken, and war is declared between their countries. In the attack on the castle, in the next act, the mother and father of the Princess are killed, and she disappears with her nurse into the forest. While escaping, she hears that her lover is to wed another. She decides then that she will try to obtain a position as her rival's attendant and learn the truth. As she is very beautiful, she succeeds in arranging it, and is taken to her rival's castle. The young Prince discovers Maleine's identity, and realizes that, after all, she is the only one he really loves. The mother of the spurned princess determines to poison Maleine, but the physician does not make the potion deadly, and as she sickens slowly, the wicked queen, tired of waiting for her death, twists a cord of hair around Maleine's neck and kills her. The scene of the last act is the cemetery near the castle where Maleine's funeral is going on. The lover stabs the Queen in revenge for the girl's murder, and then kills himself. The animals in the play all appear. The black hound is there, bats and moles gather about; swans are seen in the castle moat, and peacocks among the cypresses; owls perch on the crosses, and sheep graze near the tombstone. Among Maeterlinck's books of essays the best known are "The Bee," "The Unknown Guest," and "Our Eternity." In one of his essays he writes that he loves the idea of silence so much that the words of the people in his plays "often seem no more than swallows flying about a deep and still lake, whose surface they ruffle seldom and but for a moment." Maeterlinck has continued writing poems and essays as well as plays. The two dramas called "Palleas" and "Melisande" were put on the stage in 1893, and were greatly praised. In 1902 appeared "Le Temple Enseveli." "Le Trésor des Humbles" was dedicated to Georgette Le Blanc, an actress, who helped him write it. Later they were married and settled in Paris. Here he lived a quiet life, writing constantly, and was seen by only a few of his friends.