In La Multiple Splendeur and Les Visages de la Vie the same insatiable gusto for an infinitude of life darts again and again its red tongue. It is impossible by mere quotation to do justice to the full vastness of Verhaeren's lyric sweep. We would, however, at any rate, refer to the majesty of Le Monde with its combined crash and concord of incessant life and the Cyclopean weight of the adamantine line which buttresses at either end the flaming rivers of its verse,
"Le monde est fait avec des astres et des hommes,"
or to the sublimity of Les Penseurs in which the poet tells how
"Autour de la terre obsédée
Circule au fond des nuits, au cœur des jours
Toujours
L'orage amoncelé des idées,"
and how
"Descartes et Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant et Hegel"
"fixed the highest pinnacles of inaccessible problems for the goal of their silver arrows, and carried within themselves the grand obstinate dream of one day, imprisoning eternity in the white ice of immobile truth."
The very names, too, of some of the poems may possibly reflect some of the facets of their multiplied splendour: Le Verbe, Les Vieux Empires, La Louange du Corps Humain, A la Gloire des Cieux, A la Gloire du Vent, Les Rêves, L'Europe, La Conquête, Les Souffrances, La Joie, La Ferveur, Les Idées, La Vie, L'Effort, L'Action, Plus Loin que les Gares, Le Soir. And again and again rings out in various keys the true Nietzschean note. For "vast hopes come from the unknown" has displaced the ancient balance whereof souls are now tired. But the only reality is life:
"La vie en cris ou en silence,
La vie en lutte ou en accord
Avec la vie avec la mort
La vie âpre, la vie intense,
Elle est ici dans la fureur ou dans la haine
De l'ascendant et rouge ardeur humaine."
It is fine proof also of the vast vitality of Verhaeren that even in so recent a work as Les Rhythmes Souveraines the muscled majesty of his verse, though possibly a trifle less violent, shows no abatement of its essential strength. We would mention in particular the poems Michel Ange, Chant d'Hercule, Les Barbares with the swift crispness of its one-foot lines, and above all Le Paradis with its almost Miltonic picture of