Vous m'avez dit, tel soir, des paroles si belles
Que sans doute les fleurs, qui se penchaient vers nous,
Soudain nous out aimés et que l'une d'entre elles,
Pour nous toucher tous deux, tomba sur nos genoux.
Vous me parliez des temps prochains où nos années,
Comme des fruits trop mûrs, se laisseraient cueillir;
Comment éclaterait le glas des destinées,
Et comme on s'aimerait en se sentant vieillir.
Votre voix m'enlaçait comme une chère étreinte,
Et votre cœur brûlait si tranquillement beau
Qu'en ce moment j'aurais pu voir s'ouvrir sans crainte
Les tortueux chemins qui vont vers le tombeau.[7]
The third volume, Les Heures du Soir, has wonderfully closed the peaceful cycle with a series of poems, which no doubt have old age for their motive, but which show no trace of lassitude in the artist. Summer has turned to autumn, but how opulent and ripe this autumn is: the golden fruits of memory hang down and glow in the reflection of the sun that has been so well loved. Once again love passes with bright images: he is changed and purified, but as masterful and as strong as on the first day.
I love these little poems of Verhaeren's with a different and no less a love than that I do his great and important lyric works. I have never been able to understand why these poems—for as far as the iconoclastic work is concerned, respect for tradition and fear of innovations may have scared many people away—have not enjoyed a widespread popularity. For never since the tenderly vibrating music of Verlaine's La Bonne Chanson, never since the letters of the Brownings, has wedded happiness been so marvellously celebrated as in these stanzas. Nowhere else has love been spiritualised so nobly, with such crystal purity, nowhere else has the synthesis of love and wedlock been more intrinsically fashioned. It is with a quite especial love that I love these poèmes francs et doux, for here behind the savage, ecstatic poet, the passionate and strong poet of Les Villes Tentaculaires, another poet appears, the simple, quiet, and modest poet, the gentle and kind poet, as we know him in life. Here, on the other side of the poetic ecstasy, we have the noble personality of Verhaeren, in whom we revere, not only a poetic force, but a human perfection as well. By the luminous gate of these frail poems goes the path to his own life.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'Le Paradis' (Les Rythmes Souverains).
[2] 'Hommage' (Au Bord de la Route).
[3] 'C'est la bonne heure où la lampe s'allume' (Les Heures d'Après-midi).
[4] 'Avec mes sens, avec mon cœur et mon cerveau'. (Les Heures d'Après-midi).
[5] 'Voici quinze ans déjà' (Les Heures d'Après-midi).
[6] 'Les baisers morts des défuntes années' (Ibid.)