Emile Verhaeren Poems
A collection of select Emile Verhaeren famous poems that were written by Emile Verhaeren or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
Don't forget to view our
Emile Verhaeren
home page with links to biographical information, articles, and more poems that may not be listed here.
See also:
by
Emile Verhaeren
Long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain
Interminably, with its nails of grey,
Athwart the dull grey day,
Rakes the green window-pane—
So infinitely, endlessly, the rain,
The long, long rain.
The rain.
Since yesternight it keeps unravelling
Down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling
About the sullen sky.
The low black sky;
Since yesternight, so slowly, patiently.
Unravelling its threads upon the roads.
Upon the roads and lanes, with even...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In my dreams, I sometimes pair you with those queens who slowly descend the golden, flowered stairways of legend; I give you names that are married with beauty, splendour and gladness, and that rustle in silken syllables along verses built as a platform for the dance of words and their stately pageantries.
But how quickly I tire of the game, seeing...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In this rugged winter when the floating sun founders on the horizon like a heavy wreck, I love to say your name, with its slow, solemn tone, as the clock echoes with the deep strokes of time.
And the more I say it, the more ravished is my voice, so much so that from my lips it descends into my heart...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
During those hours wherein we are lost so far from all that is not ourselves, what lustral blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that strain towards all love?
Clasping our hands without praying, stretching out our arms without crying aloud, but with earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not what, how we...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The ferryman, a green reed 'twixt his teeth,
With hand on oar, against the current strong
Had rowed and rowed so long.
But she, alas! whose voice was hailing him
Across the far waves dim.
Still further o'er the far waves seemed to float,
Still further backwards, 'mid the mists, remote.
The casements with their eyes.
The dial-faces of the towers that rise
Upon the shore,
Watched, as he strove...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Yon, in the depths of the evening's track,
Like a herd of blind bullocks that seek their fellows,
Wild, as in terror, the tempest bellows.
And suddenly, there, o'er the gables black
That the church, in the twilight, around it raises
All scored with lightnings the steeple blazes.
See the old bell-ringer, frenzied with fear.
Mouth gaping, yet speechless, draw hastening near.
And the knell of alarm that...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
I bring you this evening, as an offering, my joy at having plunged my body into the silk and gold of the frank and joyous wind and the gorgeous sun; my feet are bright with having walked among the grasses; my hands sweet with having touched the heart of flowers; my eyes shining at having felt the tears suddenly well...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Be once more merciful and cheering to us, light, pale brightness of winter that will bathe our brows when of an afternoon we both go into the garden to breathe in one last warmth.
We loved you long ago with so great a pride, with so great a love springing from our hearts, that one supreme and gentle and kindly flame...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Uninterruptedly falls the snow,
Like meagre, long wool-strands, scant and slow,
O'er the meagre, long plain disconsolate.
Cold with lovelessness, warm with hate.
Infinite, infinite falls the snow.
Like a moment's time.
Monotonously, in a moment's time;
On the houses it falls and drops, the snow.
Monotonous, whitening them o'er with rime;
It falls on the sheds and their palings below.
And myriad-wise, it falls and lies
In ridgèd waves
In the...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves
And down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves;
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies,
The wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk
Speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er;
And diamond-rayed,...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The golden barks of lovely summer that set out, riotous for space, are returning sad and weary from the blood-stained horizons.
With monotonous strokes of the oars, they advance upon the waters; they are as cradles in which sleep autumn flowers.
Stalks of lilies with golden brows, you all lie overthrown; alone, the roses struggle to live beyond death.
What matters to their...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
I thought our joy benumbed for ever, like a sun faded before it was night, on the day that illness with its leaden arms dragged me heavily towards its chair of weariness.
The flowers and the garden were fear or deception to me; my eyes suffered to see the white noons flaming, and my two hands, my hands, seemed, before their...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The darkness is lustral and the dawn iridescent. From the lofty branch whence a bird flies, the dew-drops fall.
A lucid and frail purity adorns a morning so bright that prisms seem to gleam in the air. A spring babbles; a noise of wings is heard.
Oh! how beautiful are your eyes at that first hour when our silver ponds shimmer in...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The lovely garden blossoming with flames that seemed to us the double or the mirror of the bright garden we carried in our hearts is crystallized in frost and gold this evening.
A great white silence has descended and sits yonder on the marble horizons, towards which march the trees in files, with their blue, immense and regular shadow beside them.
No...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Alas! the days of the crimson phlox and of the proud roses that brightened its gates are far away, but however faded and withered it may be—what matters!—I love our garden still with all my heart.
Its distress is sometimes dearer and sweeter to me than was its gladness in the burning summer days. Oh! the last perfume slowly rendered up...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
When your hand, on an evening of the sluggish months, commits to the odorous cupboards the fruits of your orchard, I seem to see you calmly arranging our old perfumed and sweet-tasting memories.
And my relish for them returns, as it was in former years in the gold and the sun and with the wind on my lips; and then I...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In his village grey
At foot of the dykes, that encompass him
With weary weaving of curves and lines
Toward the sea outstretching dim,
The rope-maker, visionary white.
Stepping backwards along the way,
Prudently 'twixt his hands combines
The distant threads, in their twisting play.
That come to him from the infinite.
When day is gone.
Through ardent, weary evenings, yon
The whirr of a wheel can yet be heard;
Something by...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Shall we suffer, alas! the dead weight of the years until at length we are no more than two quiet people, exchanging the harmless kisses of children at evening when the fire flames in the hollow of the chimney?
Shall our dear furniture see us drag ourselves with slow steps from the hearth to the beechen chest, support ourselves by the...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Roses of June, you the fairest with your hearts transfixed by the sun; violent and tranquil roses, like a delicate flock of birds settled on the branches;
Roses of June and July, upright and new, mouths and kisses that suddenly move or grow still with the coming and going of the wind, caress of shadow and gold on the restless garden;
Roses...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its sleeping scalds?
I go to meet those who are returning from the wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
This barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe, soldered together by the might of claw and tooth, in a mad whirl of blood, of fiery cries, of wounds, and of jaws that bite and bite again,
This was myself before you were mine, you who are new and old, and who, from the depths of your eternity, came to me with passion and...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
As in the simple ages, I have given you my heart, like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals my lips have rested.
The flower, I gathered it with fingers of flame; say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it is through the eyes that soul listens to soul.
The flower...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Young and kindly spring who clothes our garden with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and steeps them in his limpidity.
The breeze and the lips of the leaves babble, and slowly shed in us the syllables of their brightness.
But the best in us turns away and flees material words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better than all...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
To love with our eyes, let us lave our gaze of the gaze of those whose glances we have crossed, by thousands, in life that is evil and enthralled.
The dawn is of flowers and dew and the mildest sifted light; soft plumes of silver and sun seem through the mists to brush and caress the mosses in the garden.
Our blue...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
This is the holy hour when the lamp is lit: everything is calm and comforting this evening; and the silence is such that you could hear the falling of feathers.
This is the holy hour when gently the beloved comes, like the breeze or smoke, most gently, most slowly. At first, she says nothing—and I listen; and I catch a glimpse...Read more of this...