In Les Heures Claires (1896) the drastic violence of Les Villes Tentaculaires abates for the time being into a mood of resigned, but yet robust melancholy, which immortalises the sweetness, deepness, and softness of the poet's love for his wife.
In Les Forces Tumultueuses, however, the poet has got once again into the full swing of his drastic stride. The mood is to some extent the same as that of Les Villes Tentaculaires, though the Zolaesque concreteness of detail is merged in the broadness of a genuine Lucretian sweep. The book consists of a series of lyrical poems, lyrical, albeit, in the sense rather of Pindar than of Herrick, which exalt the various phases of human energy. Thus in the poem, L'Art, Verhaeren soars upwards with a tremendous rush:
"D'un bond
Son pied cassant le sol profond
Son double aile dans la lumière
Le cou tendu, le feu sous les paupières
Partit, vers le soleil et vers l'extase,
Ce dévoreur d'espace et de splendeur Pégase."
In Les Maîtres the poet describes the various types of superman, from "the monk" of the Middle Ages to the banker of the twentieth century, who dominates the world as he "binds sinister destiny to his bourgeois will," and sows in the distance his winged gold.
"Son or aile qui s'enivre d'espace,
Son or planant, son or rapace,
Son or vivant,
Son or dont s'éclairent et rayonnent les vents,
Son or qui boit la terre
Par les pores de son misère
Son or ardent, son or furtif, son or retors.
Morceau d'espoir et de soleil—son or!"
Some mention must also be made of the poem, Les Femmes, which, subdivided into L'Éternelle, L'Amante, L'Amazone, ranks in our view as the greatest sex poem of the century. In contrast, for instance, with Swinburne, who treats sex rather as a thing of beauty and of pleasure than as an underlying world-force, and who has both the advantage and the disadvantage of the specifically classical conception of life, Verhaeren, whether he rings his changes in L'Amante on the soft refrain, "Mon rêve est embarqué dans une île flottante," shows in L'Amazone that the New Woman can be something considerably more poetic than a Strindbergian monstrosity, or sings in L'Éternelle her "who thinks she encloses the whole world within her flesh," will boom out again and again the cosmic and universal peal. The verse throughout is as beautiful as can be desired. But it has something more than beauty; it has stature, majesty, speed, force, that exaltation of reality which is the essence of the highest poetry.
In the poems, La Science, L'Erreur, La Folie, Les Cultes, Verhaeren proceeds to formulate his own philosophy of life, and his prophetic enthusiasm for the new modern truths, under whose clear feet the old texts have crumbled, as he expounds
"Comment la vie est une à travers tous les êtres
Qu'ils soient matière instruit esprit ou volonté
Forêt myriadaire et rouge où s'enchevêtrent
Les débordements fous de la fécondité."
Put shortly, his philosophy is a compound of those of Nietzsche and of Bergson. His soul, no doubt, swings in unison with the universal rhythm of the world, but, like Nietzsche, he finds in force and life realities transcending all errors, and after a historic survey of the more popular deities of humanity from Gog to Jehovah, and from Satan to Christ, enunciates his belief in humanity in stanzas of sublime blasphemy, far more truly religious than the ambiguous scrolls and rubrics of any antiquarian creed:
"L'homme respire et sur la terre il marche, seul.
Il vit pour s'exalter du monde et de lui-même,
Sa langue oublie et la prière et le blasphême;
Ses pieds foulent le drap de son ancien linceul.
Il est l'heureuse audace au lieu d'être la crainte;
Tout l'infini ne retentit que de ses bonds
Vers l'avenir plus doux, plus clair et plus féconds
Dont s'aggrave le chant et s'alentit la plainte.
Penser, chercher, et découvrir sont ses exploits.
Il emplit jusqu'aux bords son existence brêve;
Il n'enfle aucun espoir, il ne fausse aucun rêve,
Et s'il lui faut des Dieux encore—qu'il les soit!"