E SKisylosin the uin tea Song PAUL VERLAINE His Absinthe-Tinted Song 'La beaute de I'ceuvre rachtte la difformite de I'ouvrier." Catulle Mendes. with ^decuond from hid work, arranged and iranMaUd ram the French b RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR THE ALDERBRINK PRESS CHICAGO Copyright 1916 BY RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR TO THE MEMORY OF ONE LONG SINCE ASLEEP AND YET WHO LIVING LOVED THE POETS* SONGS JUDGE JONATHAN C. APPLEGATE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH LOVE AND REVERENCE BY HIS SON CONTENTS PAGE Paul Verlaine 3 POEMS SATURNINE To Eugene Carriere 43 MELANCHOLIA I. RESIGNATION ..!......... 44 II. NEVERMORE 45 III. AFTER THREE YEARS 46 IV. Vow 46 V. LASSITUDE 47 VI. MY FAMILIAR DREAM 48 VII. To A WOMAN 48 ETCHINGS I. PARISIAN SKETCH 49 III. MARINE 50 IV. EFFECTS OF NIGHT 50 V. GROTESQUES 52 SOMBER LANDSCAPES I. SETTING SUNS 54 II. TWILIGHT OF MYSTIC EVE 54 III. PROMENADE SENTIMENTAL 55 IV. VALPURGIS NIGHT, CLASSIC 55 V. AUTUMN SONG 57 VI. THE SHEPHERD'S HOUR 58 VII. THE NIGHTINGALE 59 CAPRICES I. WOMAN AND CAT 59 III. SONG OF THE INGENUES . . . . . . . 60 V. MONSIEUR PRUDHOMME 61 [ix] PAGE SUB URBE 62. SERENADE 63 A DAHLIA 64 NEVERMORE 65 IL BACIO (The Kiss) 65 IN THE WOODS 66 MARCO 67 FETES GALLANT MOONLIGHT 71 PANTOMIME 71 ON THE GRASS 72 THE WALK 72 THE PROMENADE 73 IN THE GROTTO 73 THE INGENUS 74 CORTEGE 74 THE SHELLS 75 SKATING 76 FANTASTICS 78 CYTHERE 78 AFLOAT 79 THE FAUN 80 MANDOLINE 80 To CLYMENE 81 LETTER 81 INDOLENTS 83 COLUMBINE 83 THE FALLEN CUPID 85 SOURDINE 85 COLLOQUY SENTIMENTAL 86 THE GOOD SONG I. The morning sun makes warm and golden, too 91 II. All grace and all light 91 III. In her ruche-bordered dress of green and gray 92 IV. Since dawn awoke and sunrise now is here . 93 V. Before thou takest flight, pale 94 VI. The white moon 95 [x] PAGE VII. The landscape from the curtained window square 95 VIII. A saint in her bright halo 96 IX. Her right arm, in a gesture amiable and sweet 97 X. Fifteen long days to come, and six weeks gone 97 XI. This hard proof soon will have an end . . 98 XII. Go, song, on wings wind-blown 99 XIII. As yesterday they talked, our elders wise . 99 XIV. The fireside and the lamplight's level ray . 100 XV. Almost, I fear, if truth be said 101 XVI. The noise of the taverns, and the black mud of the sidewalks 102 XVII. Is it not so? Despite what others say . . . 102 XVIII. These stormy times serve to remind . . . 103 XIX. So, it shall be a day of summer, dear . . . 104 XX. I went by paths where danger hides . . . 104 XXI. Winter has gone: the balmy light indeed . . 105 ROMANCES WITHOUT WORDS FORGOTTEN AIRS I. This is the languorous ecstasy .... 109 II. I vaguely guess, across a murmur drawn . 109 III. It weeps in my heart 1 10 V. The piano, kissed by a hand soft and frail . 1 1 1 VI. Behold the dog of Jean Nivelle . . . . in VJI. How sad how sad my heart today . . . 112 VIII. In the interminable 113 IX. The shadow of trees in the vaporous stream, fog-kissed 114 BELGIAN LANDSCAPES WALCOURT 115 CHARLEROI 115 BRUSSELS (Simple Frescos, I. and II.) . . . . 117 HORSES OF WOOD 118 MALINES 119 WATER COLORS GREEN 120 [xi] PAGE SPLEEN" 120 STREETS 121 WISDOM I VII. The false fair days that shown all day, my weary soul 125 IX. Wisdom of Louis Racine, how I envy it . . . 125 X. No! 'Twas Gallician Jansenist this century glad 126 II I. O my God, thou hast wounded me with love . 127 III III. Hope shines as doth a wisp of straw in the stable 128 IV. See, a calm orphan, I am come 129 V. A great weariness 130 VI. The sky is just beyond the roof 130 VII. I know not why 131 IX. The sound of a horn sobs toward the wood . 132 X. Our bodies how they make my heart expand . 132 XIII. Long rows of hedges stretch away . . . . 133 XV. The sea is fairer 134 OF OLD AND RECENTLY OF OLD PROLOGUE 137 PIERROT 137 KALEIDOSCOPE 138 INTERIOR 139 ART OF POETRY 140 THE CLOWN 141 ALLEGORY 142 THE INN 142 CIRCUMSPECTION 143 VERSES TO BE SLANDERED 144 [xii] PAGE II II. LANGUOR 145 IV. LANDSCAPE 145 VI. THE POET AND THE MUSE 146 VIII. A ROGUE 147 IX. MADRIGAL 148 RECENTLY PROLOGUE 148 LOVE BALLAD 153 PARSIFAL 154 EVENING THOUGHT 154 LUCIEN LETINOIS 155 III. O woman! prudent, wise calm enemy . 155 V. I have a mania for love. My foolish heart is weak 156 XVIII. Doest thou recall in paradise, dear soul . 156 PARALLELLY DEDICATION 161 ALLEGORY 162 THE FRIENDS I. ON THE BALCONY 162 VI. SAPPHO 163 HARLOTS I. To THE PRINCESS ROUKINE 164 III. CASTA PIANA 165 REFERENCES II. FALSE IMPRESSION 166 III. OTHERS 167 IV. REVERSIBLES 168 V. TANTALIZED 169 VI. IMPROBABLE, BUT TRUE 170 VII. THE LAST TEN 170 [ xiii ] PAGE MOONS I. I wish, that I may kill you, O time that lays me waste 171 II. AFTER THE MANNER OF PAUL VERLAINE . 171 III. EXPLANATION 172 THE LAST FETE GALLANT 172 POEM SATURNINE 173 THE IMPUDENT 174 THE IMPENITENT 175 BALLAD OF THE LIFE IN RED 177 HANDS 178 PIERROT GAMIN 180 CAPRICE 181 HAPPINESS VI. So very old already 185 X. Fantastic "chance" that wrecked me, without sense or rhyme 185 XXV. You ask of me some verses on "Amour" : . 187 XXXI. Immediately after the sumptuous Salutaris . 188 SONGS FOR HER II. Companion, savory and good 191 XIII. Brunette, or blonde 192 XX. You trust the signs of the coffee grounds . . 193 XXIII. I've had no luck with womenkind .... 193 XXV. Once I was mystic, but it could not last . . 194 ODES IN HER HONOR V. When peacefully 199 XIX. They tell me, Sweet, you are untrue .... 200 BIBLIOGRAPHY 203 NOTES . 207 [xiv] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Paul Verlaine Facing page 3 Moonlight 71 The Promenade " "109 The Walk " "153 Fantastics. " " 191 The four photogravures are from paintings by Edmund Dulac, and are used through the courtesy of L Illustration, Paris. PAUL VERLAINE w PAUL VERLAINE THE MAN ANDERING from lupanar to lupanar, and from wine-shop to wine-shop, he seems to have stag- gered out of the pages of Petronius some vague, in- definite creature, half beast and half man a veritable satyr and who, in the glitter of modern Paris, fared as fatuitously as in a fable. Indeed, well might he be likened to the mythical old Eumpolus, the drunken brawling poet of the Satyricon, reappearing after so many centuries, with a fresh stock of mock-heroic verses and amplifying in some dingy cafe of the Quartier Latin, his tale of the Ephesian matron. His life from early youth appears to have followed the course of a Rake's Progress, as though, during adolescence, he had chosen Hogarth's hero for model. And to what depths this primrose path finally led him to a felon's cell, an exile's garret, and the pauper's bed of death. Let us look at this singular genius in one of his favorite haunts. It is the year 1 893. A basement cafe, Place St. Michel, Paris. The air is fetid with tobacco smoke, mixed with the pungent, acrid odor of absinthe. It is two o'clock in the morning. Some Parisian night birds, souteneurs, piles de joie, and the like, have dropped in to moisten their gullets and look for prey. At a table in the center of the room a group of young [3] 4 Paul Verlaine men are sipping bocks and petits verres and listening to the rabelaisien ejaculations of a drunken man who looks to be sixty-five years old but who, in reality, is not yet fifty. The drunkard is Verlaine the listeners some of his self-styled disciples. But the master? "A face," to use the words of Jules Huret, "like that of a wicked angel grown old, with a thin untrimmed beard and abrupt nose; his bushy, bristling eyebrows resembling bearded wheat, hiding deep set green eyes; his wholly bald and huge long skull, misshapen by enig- matic bumps all these give to his physiognomy a con- tradictory appearance of stubborn asceticism and cyclopean appetites." He is dressed in a cheap ill- fitting suit of gray, evidently of English make. His cane and a greasy hat are lying beside him. His linen, if such it may be called, appears to have been resur- rected by a ragpicker a chiffonnier of the Quartier and sold to some ambulatory Hebrew vendor who in turn passed it on to Verlaine for a few sous. He is drinking absinthe. The wan, purplish light shed by the gas jets from the walls, mingled with the more ruddy glow from a large oil lamp hanging above the group, throws into his glass some rays of iridescent splendor. Half curiously, half questioningly his sunken, glowing eyes peer into the greenish opalescent liquid. The look is that of a man not altogether cer- tain of his identity the fixed gaze of a somnambulist taking on a puzzled expression at the moment of awakening. Well might he question, for into that devil's chalice he had poured all his youth, all his for- tune, all his talent, all his happiness, all his life. The group had been discussing literature earlier in the night, as always. Poets had been dragged by their feet, so to speak, tossed in imaginary blankets or exalted beyond the gods. Then the hated bourgeois were driven into the arena where they were martyred, individually and in groups, with all the ingenuity of a The Man 5 band of Bohemians or Apaches. The night wearing, they had turned to that subject with which men fre- quently (if not habitually) regale their empty cups and stimulate senses already jaded by drink to the subject of sex. And the master, with a nonchalance altogether Gallic, was giving vent to obscenities that would have made blush a haberdasher's manikin,. In such a manner were Verlaine's evenings usually spent at this period. It was about this time that Edmund Gosse, the English writer, met the poet. "I was looking," says he in French Profiles, "for that vaster lepidopter, that giant hawkmoth, Paul Verlaine . . . who uncoiled his proboscus in the same absinthe corollas," as other of the butterfly creatures of tinkling rhyme. It was late at night when, with a party of friends, the poet had been sought in vain at his familiar haunts. Suddenly the word was passed that he had been seen at the Cafe Soleil d'Or. No Verlaine. But "where I sat, by the elbow of Moreas," says Gosse : "I was opposite an open door, absolutely dark, lead- ing down by oblique stairs, to a cellar. As I idly watched this square of blackness, I suddenly saw some ghostly shape fluttering at the bottom of it. It took the form of a strange bald head, bobbing close to the ground. Although it was so dim and vague, an idea crossed my mind. Not daring to speak, I touched Moreas, and so drew his attention to it. "Pas un mot, pas un geste, Monsieur!" he whispered, and then, in- structed in the guile of his race, insidias Danaum, the eminent author of Les Cantilenes rose, making a vague detour toward the street, and then plunged at the cellar door. There was a prolonged scuffle and a rolling down stairs; then Moreas reappeared triumphant; behind him something flopped up out of the darkness like an owl, a timid, shambling figure in a soft black hat, with jerking hands, and it peeped with the inten- tion to disappear again." 6 Paul Verlaine Sherard, another English writer, thus describes the glimpse he had of Verlaine as follows: "My first sight of this great, simple, beautiful poet and child was in the basement of a cafe . . . where there used to be singing, and where the poets gathered. Verlaine was drunk that night and as usual was dressed in rags. He had a false nose on his face (for it was carnival time) and he was piping on a little tin whistle. The spectacle had the terrible comedy touch of Aristophanes. It was tragedy made grotesque. The man had the head and face of Socrates, and here we saw Socrates playing the buffoon." Such was the appearance of Paul Verlaine at the period of his greatest renown. A singular character indeed, but in every respect conforming to the accepted idea of a true poet the cicada of life's short summer, with no thought for the future or care of the present, piping his haunting melodies on the warm air and fall- ing dead at the roadside before the first frost. Pauvre Lelainf To write of Verlaine, the man, one must first call to aid those men of science whose vocation is that of dealing with pathological subjects. These savants ex- perience no difficulty in placing such a character in the proper category. Even a pseudo-scientist, one such as Max Nordau, might be permitted to give expert (?) testimony. Let us examine the prisoner (or poet!) on trial for his reputation : The Prosecutor: "Dr. Nordau, what in your opinion, is the mental responsibility of the subject now on trial?" Mein Herr, Dr. Max Nordau: "He is suffering from dementia he is a paroxysmal dipsomaniac. Moral insanity, however, is not present. The subject sins through irresistible impulse. He is an Impulsivist." The Man ^ The Prosecutor: "Are there any other phases of this malady?" Mein Herr, Dr. Max Nordau: "Yes, morbid in- tensified eroticism. The subject is what scientific men call a circulaire, that is, he is a victim of that form of mental disease in which states of excitement and depres- sion follow each other in regular succession. Circu- laires are condemned by the very nature of their affliction to be vagabonds and thieves. Verlaine has been a vagabond all his life." The Prosecutor : "Are there other symptoms of this mental malady?" Mein Herr, Dr. Max Nordau: "Many. Most of Verlaine's poetry is mere grimoire. His language is often that of babes. He can not properly connect an adjective with a noun to save his life." Further testimony on the part of the witness, Dr. Nordau, elicits the fact that there are some poems in Verlaine's repertoire that are, after all, really Kosher. For instance, there is that little song of only fifty words. It is called Chanson d'Automne. Merely a gust of October air sharpened in the gathering shadows of early twilight and blowing through the scant brown foliage of a forest tree. But the sigh ! "Les sanglots longs Des violons De V automne Blessent mon cceur D'une langueur Monotone." Is there anything in literature to rival it? Is it not worth many pages of so-called scientific writing? Dr. Nordau confesses : "Even if literally translated there remains something of the melancholy magic of the lines, which in French are so rhythmical and full of 8 Paul Verlaine music." Then there is the poem in La Bonne Chanson beginning : "Avant que tu ne t'en allies/' and that other world known poem in Romances Sans Paroles, the first stanza of which, "II pleure dans mon cceur Comme il pleut sur la ville. Quelle est cette langueur Qui penetre mon cceur?" has wept in so many, many hearts. Well may Dr. Max pause in his senseless tirade against Decadents to proclaim these poems the faultless pearls among French lyrics. But as to Nordau's characterization of Verlaine, all had been said, and better, by Lombroso, from whose book "The Man of Genius" Nordau filched without stint. As to Verlaine, one can not discover a poet with a surgeon's scalpel or the chart of a neurologist. It is unnecessary to endeavor to justify Verlaine's faults of character. Indeed, he makes no effort to ex- cuse himself. On the contrary, he is continually debas- ing himself, but the psychological reason is not far to seek, for it has its origin in a kind of Mosochism. Drink was Verlaine's besetting sin. This habit he formed early in life. Writing of drunkenness in his Confessions, he says : "This absinthe ! What horror, when I think of those days (his early manhood) . . . and of time not so remote ... I repeat in all shame I shall have later to tell of many absurdities (and worse) due to the abuse of this horrible drink; this abuse itself, source of folly and of crime, of idiocies and of shame. The governments should suppress this absinthe and why not?" The Man 9 Truly his life was steeped in I'herbe sainte. During his latter days (save when in some hospital) he seldom drew a sober breath. The deep melancholy, the sad languors, the frightful ennui, the stormy scenes with friends or with his numerous mistresses, all these were due to drink. The estrangement with his wife, his vagabond wanderings with Arthur Rimbaud and his subsequent imprisonment at Mons were due to the same cause. When sober the poet was kindly, tractable and good natured and had the faculty of making friends who sympathized with his unfortunate temperament. One of them, Edmond Lepelletier, a brave and good man, who was later to become his biographer, has done much to dispel the evil report that had its rise at the time the poet was divorced from his wife, and which clung to him through life. Writing of this in his biography of the poet, Lepel- letier says: "A legend grew up around him; all the more persistent and enduring from the fact that Ver- laine himself was largely its author, and dug the grave of his own reputation. His disciples widely dissemi- nated the gospel of depravity it amused him to preach." Elsewhere in this biography is found this passage: "What decided him (to leave Rethel, where he was professor) was, perhaps, one of his impulses strange, powerful, and much misunderstood toward friend- ship. I have already alluded to the strength of the attachment he conceived for various comrades: one of his Dujardin cousins, Lucien Viotti and Arthur Rim- baud . . . Lucien Letinois, another of his attachments, was the son of a farmer, born at Coulommes, in the Ardennes. He was a tall, pale, slim, awkward youth, with a melancholy and simple air . . . the shepherd in a comic opera." Upon the death of this youth, Ver- laine, "not being able," as writes Lepelletier, "like the Emperor Hadrian to erect a mausoleum in stone to this io Paul Verlaine Ardennoise Antinous, he constructed Amour, a lyrical monument apparently indestructible." It is curious to note that Mdlle. Mathilde Maute, Verlaine's fiancee, who in 1870 could prattle to her lover, "J'ai demande hier a maman comment on avait des enfants et elle m'a repondu que c'etait quand on baisait un homme sur la bouche" would in a few short months calmly announce to the world, "que les senti- ments de son man pour ce privilegie (Rimbaud) des Muses se muaient en une affection . . . trop vive!" Arthur Rimbaud was a powerful factor in the down- fall of Verlaine. A rascal, not without talent, he led the weak-willed poet from his home in Paris to a vaga- bond life in Belgium and England. Then, having com- pleted his ruin, he succeeded in landing his erstwhile friend in prison and disappeared from Europe, later to reappear in the spectacular role of slave driver and trader in Northern Africa. Verlaine never ceased to regret his wife, who was divorced from him in 1874. In his volume of prose, entitled Memoires d'un Veuf, he writes of her as fol- lows : "She was petite small, with a fear of embon- point; her toilet was almost simple, coquettish in a way, but very slightly so. I remember her always as dressed in gray or green a tender green and somber gray, because of the indecisive color of her hair which ap- peared to be of a luminous chestnut tint, and of her eyes of which one could hardly decide or even guess the color. She was good hearted, but truly vindictive and given to irredeemable hatreds. Her hands were little, and her forehead rather small, upon which a kiss was only to be lightly pressed to pass to other things. The blue flower of the veins about her temples was easily swollen by anger not hasty, but premeditated but for causes, which, after all, were pardonable. In sum, she was a wife worthy of any man, and although tempestuous at times, like the sea, like it she could be calm and gentle and altogether lovable." The Man n Such was the heroine of La Bonne Chanson, a work which Lepelletier calls a stanza taken from the eternal poem of youthful love. Some years after her divorce Madame Verlaine married and became the mother of an interesting family. According to Frank Harris, in his Contemporary Portraits, she was alive in 1915 and about to publish her Memoirs. Aside from the period of his infancy Verlaine was sober for a time. This was an enforced sobriety of two years in jail. From the prison at Mons also dates what he was pleased to call his religious conversion. There be those who profess to find in the volume of Sagesse, begun about this period, "the most truly beau- tiful and Christian poems of all time." Granted, they may be Christian, but from another point of view Sagesse is the most puerile of all his works. Verlaine was incapable, mentally, of attaining, even approxi- mately, the Christian ideal. Repentant (being sober and in prison) no doubt he was, but Christian, never. Sagesse, however, serves by way of contrast to bring into bolder relief the strange, erotic work Parallele- ment, whose verses appear to have been written alter- nately with those of Sagesse. Apropos to this, Donos in his Verlaine Intime writes : "To the magic lantern of the Devil, Verlaine en train to compose Sagesse is obsessed with the lubrique vision of a certain chamber in Paris where his affectionate Rim- baud offered him one night a singular hospitality." And the poet turns from "My God to me has said," to compose: "O chambre, as-tu garde les spectres ridicules, O plein de jour sale et de bruits d'araignees?" Neither in Sagesse nor Parallelement is Verlaine immortal. Paul Verlaine has erroneously been likened to a num- ber of other writers. On the side of his character he 12 Paul Verlaine has been compared with Villon and Poe. There are points of resemblance to each. But as a writer he is unique, and comparison fails. Of northern French an- cestry, he had a penchant for the North for Belgium and England. He learned English and read Shake- speare. He even wrote some sober, dignified prose articles for certain English magazines, his style con- forming with the solidity and gravity of these reviews. During the last years of his life, Verlaine furnished much good natured amusement for tout Paris. But these were years of misery and suffering for the poet, reduced to pauperism by his dissipated habits and im- practical temperament. In proportion, however, as his misery and illness were augmented, his fame grew. "Verlaine is back to the hospital," printed as a news item in the daily press, was the signal for a fresh batch of anecdotes concerning his strange career. Edgar Saltus writing of the poet says: "After his discharge from prison, I had the signal honor of meet- ing him, and I can see him now, Socrates and Anapreon in one, hiccoughing down the laurel lanes, paying with enigmatic songs the food which young poets provided, distilling a mysterious music from the absinthe offered by them, and presenting at last a spectacle unique in literature, that of a singer applauded in a charity bed and rising from it to become one of the glories of France though not of the French Academy." It was George Moore who first brought Verlaine to the notice of the English public. Moore's visit to the poet and related in his book Impressions and Opinions is illuminating: "In a dark corner, at the end of a narrow passage situated at the top of the last flight of stairs, we discovered a door. We knocked. A voice made itself heard. We entered and saw Verlaine. The terrible forehead, bald and prominent, was half covered by a filthy nightcap, and a night shirt full of the grease of the bed covered his shoulders; a stained The Man 13 and discolored pair of trousers was hitched up somehow about his waist. He was drinking wine at sixteen sous the litre. He told us that he had just come out of the hospital; that his leg was better, but it still gave him a great deal of pain. He pointed to it. We looked away." The poet's tempestuous liaisons with various women during his latter days serve to strengthen the conclu- sion of Lombroso that genius is a degenerative psychosis of the epileptoid order. These women were beings of the commonest clay, most of them from the underworld. They alternately beat, robbed and be- trayed him. Yet one of them wiped the moisture of death from his forehead, and another wept at his tomb when all others had gone. The poet's will, written in bitter jest, is a document to muse upon. It is the epitome of a misspent life : MY WILL I give nothing to the poor, because I am poor myself. I believe in God. Paul Verlaine. Codicil. As regards my obsequies, I desire to be conducted to the place of final repose in a Lesage cart (dust cart) and that my remains be deposited in the crypt of the Odeon. As my fame has never prevented any one from sleep- ing, the choirs can sing, during the sad ceremony, to an air of Gossec's, the celebrated ode "La France a perdus son Morphee" Made in Paris, June, 1885. Verlaine never learned that the senses can only be exhausted, not satisfied. But in this he was not alone. It is thus with many men of genius. Their moral sight seems blinded by the rays of that superintelligence with 14 Paul Ferlaine which the god of Chance has endowed them, and they fall to chasing the butterflies of passion, rather than giving heed to the more responsible duties of life. Like meteors out of the night of Time do such personalities appear to our astonished vision, and long after their astral bodies have flashed below the horizon do their lights persist. And it is to them we owe so much the perfect statue, the matchless painting, and the deathless song. II His LIFE Paul Marie Verlaine was born at Metz, Lorraine, France, March 30, 1844. His father, Nicolas Auguste Verlaine, was born in Belgium and was forty-six years old at the poet's birth. The poet's mother was born in Fampoux, (Pas De Calais) France. Her maiden name was Josephe Stephanie Dehee. She was thirty-two years old when her son was born. Verlaine's father was Captain Adju- tant-Major, Second Regiment of Engineers, in the French Army. He was Chevalier of the Legion d'Hon- neur and of the order of Saint Ferdinand d'Espagne. In 1851 the Verlaines moved to Paris and bought property in the suburb, Les Batignolles, on the old rue Saint Louis. In religion Mme. Verlaine was a devout Catholic, but her husband was indifferent to such matters. Paul was an only child and at an early age was sent to private school, rue Helene, and later to the Institute Landry, boarding school on the rue Chaptal, where he remained several years. At this Institute pupils were prepared by classes at the Lycee Bonaparte. In a class of fifty pupils, the future poet ranked neither first nor last. He was especially deficient in mathematics but notably good in rhetoric, literature, Latin and Greek. He took his Bachelor of Letters degree, and in an appli- cation for government position was highly recom- mended by his teacher. 1 6 Paul Verlaine Verlaine's parents intended him for the law, and after his school days he began the study of this pro- fession, at the same time endeavoring to secure a posi- tion with the Government. Finding law distasteful, the future poet took (after some months training in a business college) a subordinate position in an insurance office. Through influence of His father's friends, he was appointed, some months later, as clerk in the municipal offices of the ninth arrondissement, and later was promoted to a clerkship in the Bureau of Budgets and Accounts. This was in 1864, and the poet was then twenty years old. At this age he was already dissipated. In fact, his irregular habits dated almost from his entrance into the Lycee Bonaparte. He describes with singular sang- froid, in his Confessions, how, at the age when most children are still in knickerbockers, he lost his innocence in a vile bagnio on a side street in Paris. Verlaine as a clerk in the Hotel-de-Ville was indolent, spending most of his time in a neighboring cafe in com- pany with other municipal employes, a number of whom had literary aspirations. According to Lepelletier, few of these municipal clerks bothered their heads about work. Verlaine had written verses from his early school days, and profiting by the light duties of clerk- ship, he brought out at this time his first book, Poemes Saturniens. This work, a thin volume of 163 pages, bore the imprint "Alphonse Lemerre, publisher, Paris; 47 Passage Choiseul, 1866." Captain Verlaine having died in December, 1865, his widow continued to live at Les Batignolles with her son, upon whom she lavished every tenderness. Indeed, she spoiled him shamefully, indulged him in everything, and forgave all his youthful follies. The young clerk sowed a tremendous crop of wild oats coming home drunk at all hours of the night. This lack of restraint His Life 17 in his youth, coupled with a weak will and neurotic temperament, was the cause of his downfall. In 1869, Verlaine, still at the Hotel-de-Ville, brought out, through the publisher Lemerre, a second volume of poems, the Fetes Galantes. These were the happiest days of the unfortunate man's life. He was twenty-live. The author of two volumes of poems which gave brilliant promise, secure and light employment, promising better things, he was one of a group of young writers who had already made a noise in the world of letters and who, under the name of Parnassiens, have left an indelible impression upon French literature. He appears to have been popular with his friends. In fact, through his entire life he seems to have had the gift of friendship, and this, despite his eccentricities. His was a sort of saturnine gaiety repulsive and pleas- ing by turns. When Captain Verlaine died, he left his widow in modest but comfortable circumstances, and while the poet's salary as a clerk was small, he spent it entirely upon himself, and a little money in 1869, in Paris, went far, if one had Bohemian tastes. The poet had already met Victor Hugo, and Sainte- Beuve had earnestly and conscientiously praised his Poemes Saturniens. Barbey d'Aurevilly had also given him a slight stab of criticism. He knew intimately most of the literary people of Paris worth knowing. He was a welcomed guest at the homes of influential and worthy people. Although exceedingly ugly of face, he rather fascinated and stamped his individuality upon those who saw him for the first time. Usually careless in his costume, he now dressed better, and he was in love I Life at times is very much like those fine old Swiss clocks that play a merry little tune and then strike the hour solemnly. 1 8 Paul Verlaine The object of the poet's affection was Mdlle. Mathilde Maute, half-sister to one of his friends, Charles de Sivry, and it was at the latter's home that he first met her in the spring of 1 869. It seems to have been a case of love at first sight upon the part of both. Mdlle. Maute was very young, almost a child, and she seems to have been singularly attractive, judging from what has been written about her. That she inspired one of the most beautiful of the poet's works, La Bonne Chanson (The Good Song), must ever resound to her credit. Unfortunate for her that her path should have crossed that of the unhappy man whom she was later to wed. Posterity will forgive her any faults com- mitted in hours of sorrow. Verlaine as a husband was impossible. Youth and love! The divine alchemy that trans- mutes the base metals of daily life into the pure gold of sentiment! The poet sang: "Before thou takest flight Pale star of dawn sublime, A thousand quail Singing, singing in the thyme, Turn toward the poet, Mark his eyes how full of love, The lark Mounts to the sky above." The courtship of the young couple was filled, alter- nately, with ecstasy and disappointment, and the date of the wedding was postponed twice. Verlaine gave up for the time his dissipated habits and became a duti- ful son, if not an ideal lover. He continued to unburden his heart with the good song, and the spring of 1870 saw his hopes about to be realized. He raised his voice in that matchless lay of triumphant joy: His Life 19 "Winter has gone : the balmy light indeed Dances, from earth unto the heavens clear. O, well may the heart the most sad accede To the immense joy scattered in the air !" The year 1870 was the Terrible Year for France. The country was filled with rumors of war. The date of the wedding had been set for the month of August, but before it took place hostilities had already begun. With what disaster and defeat! With MacMahon in full flight and the Prussians advancing on Paris, amid the noise of regiments defiling along the boulevards, the nuptials were celebrated at the church of Notre Dame de Cligmancourt. Among those present was Louise Michel, then a schoolmistress at Montmartre. Of the poet at this time Lepelletier says : "He had hope and faith; marriage for him was a true sacrament, an initiation of the soul. He had never loved, never been loved before. It was the most wonderful moment in his life." It was during the first year of his marriage that Ver- laine published, through Lemerre, his third book of poems, La Bonne Chanson. "A flower in a bombshell," Victor Hugo called it. While the Verlaines celebrated their honeymoon at No. 2 Rue du Cardinal-Lemoine, where they had begun housekeeping, Paris was invested and the Com- mune raged. Things were topsyturvy at the Hotel-de- Ville, and a cloud "bigger than a man's hand" had darkened their foyer conjugal incompatibility! The poet deserted his clerical post (or rather failed to follow M. Thiers to Versailles) and shouldering a car- bine mounted guard in defense of the city, in the i6oth battalion of the Rapee-Bercy. This was during the winter, 1870-71. The weather was desperately cold, and the citizen soldier, in consequence, developed a desperate thirst. 2O Paul Verlaine Before long, he began to go home drunk, some say to beat his wife. Howbeit, the roses of August had shed their petals, and the Prussian guns had driven the blue- bird far away. The young wife fled also, going to the home of her parents. Thither the poet followed, and a temporary reconciliation took place. The poet went back to the Hotel-de-Ville in the spring, but during the summer took his wife to the country, returning in Sep- tember. Through his neglect, notwithstanding that order had been restored in Paris, he lost his clerkship. For a time the couple lived with the wife's parents, where their son, Georges, was born, and where, one fatal day, the devil entered in the form of Arthur Rimbaud. This singular genius was born at Charleville, France, in 1854, and at the time of his meeting with Verlaine was a lad of seventeen. He was precocious, and as a schoolboy had composed a number of bizarre poems. The Poemes Saturniens having come to his notice, he wrote the author a flattering letter, and the impressionable Verlaine invited him to visit Paris. Paul and his wife were still living with the latter's parents, and the introduction of Rimbaud into their home was a fresh cause of discord. Rimbaud proved himself a drunken visionary and scoundrel, and in July, 1872, the two friends decamped from Paris, going to Belgium where they led a vaga- bond existence. They also visited England, living in London for several months upon funds supplied by Verlaine's mother, eked out by a pittance earned from giving French lessons. In June, 1873, Verlaine and Rimbaud were back in Belgium, where Paul's mother awaited him in Brussels. Lepelletier writes: "Verlaine's psychological state at this period was distressing, almost morbid. I have already said that he detested and adored his wife. Alternately he cried for her, longed for her, cursed and His Life 21 overwhelmed her with reproaches and insults from afar." Association with Rimbaud had ruined him morally and physically. A hopeless dipsomaniac, he was on the verge of delirium tremens. The two men quarreled in a room at the hotel de Courtrai, Brussels, in the presence of Verlaine's mother. The poet, forthwith, drew a pistol and fired two shots at Rimbaud, intent on killing the man whose baneful influence had aided so much in completing his downfall. Save a slight wound in the wrist, Rimbaud was unhurt. A few hours later, as Rimbaud was being accompanied to the train for Charleville by Verlaine and his mother, a reconcilia- tion having taken place between the two men, the poet made another ineffectual attempt upon the life of Rimbaud. I Arrested as an assassin, he was lodged in a local / prison, 1'Amigo, and later sentenced to two years im- prisonment at Mons. During his incarceration, Ver- laine's wife obtained a divorce. During his enforced sojourn at Mons the poet's fourth volume, the Romances Sans Paroles (Romances Without Words) was printed by his friend Lepelletier. This exquisite collection of poems was unnoticed by the press. Verlaine was tabooed in Paris. His name was synonymous with shame. For five years after his release from prison in 1875, the poet led a wandering existence. He was by turns country school teacher in England, professor in an ecclesiastical college in France, and farmer at Coulom- mes, with Lucien Letinios. He drank, squandered his mother's small fortune, and failed in everything. Paris had long since forgotten him. His faithful mother was his only friend. As one writer says, Verlaine was "irregular in everything and a vagrant even in in- tellect." The poet was back in Paris in 1881, where Victor 22 Paul Verlaine Palme, a Catholic publisher, brought out his Sagesse. The work attracted little notice, and the publisher, hav- ing in the meantime learned something of the author's life, destroyed the entire edition. Verlaine, endeavor- ing to support himself and mother by literary work, was aided greatly by his friend, Lepelletier, then editor of the Reveil. The poet was for a period on the regular staff of this paper, his work consisting mainly of short sketches which were collected in a prose volume entitled, Les Memoir es d'un Feuf (The Memories of a Widower). Upon his return to Paris, the poet had found new faces and new writers. His boyhood friends had dis- appeared, or, becoming famous, had left their Bo- hemian days behind. Younger writers were forming the symbolic school, later to group themselves under the black flag of the Decadents. The Parnassiens of '68 had been hooted off the stage, and Verlaine, later to become chief bonze of this new school, was then almost unknown. He began to be seen at the Brasserie Bergere and in the cafes of the Quartier Latin, where he was usually accompanied by Germain Noveau, and where he met many new faces. His singular appearance and capacity for drink doubtless inspired more attention than his genius as a poet. Suddenly leaving the city with his mother, the poet again took up farming near the scene of his former failure, and it was during this period ( 1 883-84) that he was sentenced to a month's imprison- ment for threatening, during a fit of drunkenness, the life of this devoted parent. We find him back in Paris the following year, in com- pany with his mother, who forgave him everything, but the poor woman, worn with sorrow, did not long survive, dying in January, 1886. The poet was now alone. He was ruined in finances, and his health was rapidly failing. Attacked with gout, his muscles atro- His Life 23 phied, and his joints grew stiff. He could hardly walk. His last cent spent, he became an object of charity. With each recurring attack of rheumatism, the Munici- pality sent him to some hospital, so that practically the last years of his life were spent in the charity wards of these institutions. He had become famous, and as "Poor Lelain" filled much space in the papers. During one of his periods of convalescence he made a lecturing tour through Belgium, where he was everywhere re- ceived with becoming deference. Besides various fragments in prose, biographies, travel notes and fantasies, his publisher, Vanier, brought out successively, in Verlaine's last years, sev- eral thin volumes of poems, none of which, however, equaled in literary value his earlier work. "All things come to him who asks for nothing" even death. The Green Fairy that had so long pre- sided at his hours flew off one day. It was another Shape something dark, something foreboding, that frightened it Verlaine was again sober, but ill. The doctor came, looked into his face that face "devoured by dreams, feverish and somnolent" and went away, snaking his head. The next day, JajSH^DL^' I ^96, the poet died. Friends began to appear at the little furnished apart- ment on the rue Descartes, presided over by Eugenie Krantz, known sometimes as Nini-Mouton. This was the poet's last earthly asylum. Thanks to his mistress, he did not die in the hospital. When all was over, a doctor who examined the body said, "the deceased had at least ten mortal maladies he was worn out the mere husk of a human being!" A death mask was taken by the mouleur Meoni, and the expense of the funeral, which took place at the church, Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, was borne by friends, assisted by the State. The poet was fifty-two years old when he died. Ill THE WORK "Paul Verlaine is a juggler by the grace of God." Aline Gorren. Time is the great purifier. It is now (1916) twenty years since the subject of this study was laid in the grave. Human charity has mantled with kindly forget- fulness the faults inherent in his clay. In accord with that process of nature which wills that a thing of beauty shall never die, his poems have taken their deserving place in the world's literature. "By the grace of God Paul Verlaine was a juggler," and something more ! To the critic of his day the tour de force of this literary necromancer was that of string- ing a number of brightly colored words on a gossamer thread of thought and calling the display a poem. The trick was easy. It required neither skill nor talent. A slight rearrangement of words, and presto ! a symbolist. A dash of diablerie and we have a decadent. There is really nothing new but genius. Schools of poetry come and go. Yesterday it was a Futurist today it is the Imagist. The cult is forgotten the Poet alone lives. The poems of Paul Verlaine fill three stout volumes. Owing to their subjective treatment and autobiograph- ical character, they form a bewildering and contradic- tory index to his character. Save in his early verse, Verlaine was personal, first, last, and wholly. Remy De Gourmont said the poet's first master was Banville; the second, Baudelaire, and the third him- [25] 26 Paul Verlaine self. This characterization is probably the most ac- curate, briefly stated. However, the influence of Banville was not so pronounced as that of Baudelaire. The poet says in his Confessions that Les Fleurs du Mai was one of his earliest books, but that he pored over it without much comprehension. Verlaine's literary activity extended through three distinct periods of French poetry those of the Par- nassiens, Symbolists, and Decadents. In common with all the Parnassiens, in his first literary expression, he was largely influenced not only by Baudelaire and Ban- ville, but by Gautier and Leconte de Lisle. "The poets of this group sacrificed everything to form, seeking a sort of plastic beauty, replete with pictorial effect that charmed the ear although lacking in passion and ideas, and unable to reach the heart." Emaux et Camees and Poemes Saturniens might be taken as the work of a single writer. However, Paul Verlaine is not, on the whole, to be classed with any school of French poetry, even that of the Decadents. He very early dropped the formal, objective style of verse the Symbolist movement affected him only slightly and it was not until nearly the end of his troubled life that the so-called Decadents took him up and declared him their master. This was the beginning of the period of his most original (though not most pleasing) literary expression. The name Decadents, given to a group of young writers, who, in 1864-5, use d to frequent the cafes in the Quartier Latin, was originally meant as an insulting appellation. However, they immediately seized upon it as a slogan. Applied to literature, the word has little significance. The writers to whom it was directed were, many of them, producing beautiful work and creating something worthy of preservation. The word was used as a sort of generic term to describe all those writers of Fin de Siecle literature whose work seemed displeas- The Work 27 ing to bourgeois ptiritanisme. The Parnassiens and Symbolists readily came under this characterization. The name persists. Paul Verlaine transcends all schools. He might almost be called the first lyric voice in France. The French language, which lends itself to such surprising and charming prose, appears too formal and architec- tural for purely emotional poetry. However, at the hands of Verlaine the most beautiful results are ob- 1 tained. "There are poems," says Arthur Symons, 1 "which go as far as verse can go to become pure music, I the voice of a bird with a human soul. . . With Ver- laine, the sense of hearing and the sense of sight are almost interchangeable : he paints with sound and his line and atmosphere become music. . . His landscape painting is always an evocation, in which outline is lost in atmosphere." Verlaine is entirely untrammeled by any conventional theories of composition. He moulds the language at his will. "Always the poet of instinct or impulse, verse to him is a spontaneous expression of feeling, conscious of no literary tradition and developing no consecutive thought," to quote Prof. Wells. Lemaitre, who, next to Prof. Rene Doumic, is the poet's severist critic, says that he uses the language "not like a great writer because he knows it, but like a child because he is ignorant of it. He gives wrong senses to words in his simplicity. . . He scarcely ever expresses movements of full consciousness or entire sanity. It is on this account, very often, that the meaning of his song is clear if it is so at all to himself alone. In the same way, his rhythms are sometimes perceptible by no one but himself." For those who read them in the original language, those poems commonly most enjoyed are found in Poemes Saturniens, Fetes Galantes, La Bonne Chanson, 28 Paul Ferlaine Romances Sans Paroles, and some of the poems in Sag ess e and Jadis et Naguere. From whence came the inspiration of the charming Fetes Galantes, it would be difficult to say. Some writers profess that this, the chef d' ceume of the school of the Parnassiens, was inspired by Victor Hugo's La Fete Chez Therese; others that Shakespeare's Mid- summer Night's Dream is the source. Lepelletier hazarding a guess, sums up his conclusions as follows : "No borrowed inspiration is to be found here; it is a synthesis of the art of the eighteenth century, a pres- entation of the manners, conversations and diversions of that dainty and superficial period." Prof. Wells (Sewanee Review, 1895) writes: "To catch the grace of L'Allee or of Columbine, one must know a little of Parny and much of Watteau, for the former poem is a Dresden shepherdess in Fin de Siecle Alexandrines and the latter is her joyous companion in a song measure that might have charmed Banville him- self." This is what George Moore says of the poet: "Never shall I forget the first enchantment of Les Fetes Galantes. Here all is twilight. The royal mag- nificences of the sunset have passed; the solemn beati- tude of the night is at hand, but not yet here; the ways are veiled with shadow and lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with blue, yellow, green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange contraltos; the forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid creatures, with hands nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and fitful light . . . 'tin soir equivoque d'automne' . . . 'les belles pendent re- reuses a nos bras' . . . and they whisper 'les mots specieux et tout bas'." "Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the soul; Baudelaire on a medieval organ chanted his unbelief in goodness and truth and The Work 29 his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances a step further : hate is to him as commonplace as love, unf aith as vulgar as faith. The world is merely a doll to be attired today in a modern ball dress, tomorrow in aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, worth a poem, but it would be quite too silly to talk about belief or unbelief; Christ in wood or plaster we have heard too much of, but Christ in painted glass amid crosiers and Latin terminations, is an amusing subject for poetry. And strangely enough, a withdrawal from all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. The charm is that of an odor of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of an archbishop of Persepolis." From these "little biscuit" figures that might well be entitled Water Colors for a Fan from these "twenty little pieces of verse, steeped to the lips in the French dixhuitieme siecles perfumed and gilded atmosphere," La Bonne Chanson, which follows, is like a nuptial chime, which in truth it is. These poems reflect all that was best and most whole- some in the poet's life. By no means the greatest of his work, they are, however, the most spontaneous. The language of love is so universal and so well understood, that those who find Verlaine obscure in his other work can have no cause for complaint in reading: "All grace and all light In the flush of her sixteen years." Of La Bonne Chanson the poet once said, "I have always had a predilection for this poor little volume, into which the whole of a purified heart was put." 30 Paul Verlaine It was in Romances Sans Paroles that Verlaine found himself. A strange book, indeed, born of a troubled period of his early life. Here begins that litany which, while life lasted, he never ceased to chant lament for the wife who, through his own fault, he had irrevo- cably lost. How thoroughly had he learned that "Le passe n'est jamais une chose morte." Here, also, are emphasized those melancholy lan- guors and peculiar thrills of grief which permeate so much of his verse. "Where Baudelaire is bitter, Ver- laine is only sad," says Turquet-Milnes. And here, also, he seems "first to recognize the whole charm of the word half spoken . . . and of faltering with grace" in a manner which caused him to appear "less intellec- tually clear than emotionally simple." Ah, the hope- lessness of love ! "the vague sentiment that he listened to in his own mind, as to a far distant melancholy song:" "O triste, triste etait mon ante A cause, a cause a" une femme!" Writing of himself in Memoir es d'un Veui (doubt- less in a mood of intense ennui and forgetful of the full-blooded creatures of Parallelement, of Casta Piana and other glorified courtesans) the poet says: "Are you like myself? I hate people full of blood. I despise the whole rank of famous painters and sculp- tors, notwithstanding my admiration for their works. Noisy voices, rude laughter, shock me beyond expres- sion, in a word, I dislike health. By health I do not mean that marvelous harmony of soul and body which the heroes of Sophocles possessed, and the antique statues of pagan philosophers, but this dreadful, red face, noisy joy, burned, perspiring skin, plump hands, thick feet the whole mass of body and colors, a super- abundance of which our epoch seems to enjoy. The Work 31 "From the same motives, I hate the so-called healthy poetry. Imagine only this: Beautiful girls, beautiful boys, beautiful souls, 'mens sana' etc., everything beautiful beyond words. As for the background: Green woods, green fields, blue of the sky, golden sun, weaving white, I turn away in disgust. "Are you like myself? If not, leave me alone. But if so, stay and tell me about a September afternoon, about a burning, sad afternoon, when the golden ray of melancholy falls upon the dying and over-ripe land- scape. In such a frame, show me a quiet, queenlike figure of a woman, weary of suffering, whose youth is past but a few years. Her strength is not great; still, she can walk in the park. Clad in a white dress, she has large, gray eyes, like the sky, unchanging like the horizon. Truth is written in those eyes : a profound, warm passion is hidden in them. "My heart and my thoughts accompany this pale enchantress, while, in her flowing dress, she walks over the faded flowers, among the over-ripe fruits, sur- rounded by the scent of autumn." Of Sagesse, written in prison at Mons, an over- powering sense of shame and misery quite overbalanced his mind, already weakened by excessive use of stimu- lants. Enforced continence, also, contributed toward violent mental disturbances, so that he soon found him- self in the frame of mind of some medieval, ecstatic monk and began pouring forth a series of verses as mystical and unintelligible as any in the Apocalypse. Quite in keeping with this mental attitude are the poems of Parallelement, most of which were written at the same time. Ch. Donos, writing of this book, says: "The reading of Parallelement is equivalent to taking an aphrodisiac of exquisite flavor. It evokes the vision of a horde of unbridled luxuries, hennying like a band of wild stallions turned loose among mares on an open prairie of the Far West. Les passions les plus perverse, 32 Paul Verla'me les 'vices anormaux, hors-nature, sont celebres, mag- nifies dans ce livre. Mais en des vers si merveilleux de facture, avec de telles subtilites d'expression, d'un rythme tour a tour berceur comme de lents baisers, ou ravi dans I' elan des brutales etrientes qu'il en garde le caractere d'une ceuvre litteraire, sincere et de haute valeur poetique." Verlaine's poetical output after his release from prison and the publication of Sagesse was more mature and original, though less brilliant. Jadis et Naguere contained some poems in his best vein likely written, however, at an earlier period. In Amour the poet celebrates in graceful verses his friendship for Lucien Letinois. Here, also, may be found some of his strong- est, most original and best poised work. The note is largely personal. In Parallelement, to quote Stefan Zweig, "he won the crown of all pornographic works with perverse and indecent poems." Bonheur is a less ardent Sagesse where the note of self-pity predominates and Chansons pour Elle and Odes en Son Honneur celebrate his various mistresses. These two books are distorted echoes of The Good Song resounding in an empty heart. Liturgies Intimes are little less puerile than portions of Sagesse. With advancing years his work showed steady deterioration, and his voice, for the most part, was that of ". . . un vieux poete erre dans la gouttiere Avec la triste voix d'un fantome frileux." As Verlaine's poetry defies analysis in its original language, so does it defy interpretation in English. "How much of his work will live?" asks a writer reviewing Lepelletier's Life of Verlaine in Current Lit- erature. "Perhaps a hundred pages, but those pages will give him a place among the poets of the iQth cen- tury. He is nothing of a teacher; he throws no illumi- The Work 33 nating ray upon the problems that vex humanity; he speaks to us neither of fortitude nor hope, but in its verbal magic and power to evoke half-forgotten moods and emotions, the best of Verlaine's work is the pure gold of literature." IV THE CULT OF VERLAINE That the quality of much of the work of Paul Ver- laine is of the highest literary value, and that his fame is growing rather than diminishing are incontestable facts. George A. Tournoux, in his Bibliographic Verlaini- enne (Leipzig, Libraire E. Rowohlt, 1912) indicates 1,044 references upon the subject of his monograph. This work, although of great value to the student, makes no pretension to being complete. The compiler of this interesting contribution to letters says in the introduction: "We have thought it necessary to dis- regard the notations in the general histories of French literature, the encyclopedias, and the works of ephem- eral value, also those studies where the question of Verlaine appears merely in an accidental or summary manner. . . If we have departed from this line of conduct in favor of certain articles, it is because of the eminence of their authors as well as the character of the periodical, or that the circumstances under which they were published gave them a particular value." The Tournoux monograph, which carries the work of research up to the beginning of the year 1911, is divided into two sections. The first deals with the work of Verlaine published in France. One notation (107) in this division shows the complete works of the poet to have been published in Leipzig by Rowohlt in 1910. Interesting also to note are the books of a pornographic [35] 36 Paul Ferlaine character which have at times fallen under the ban of the courts: 1867 5. Les Amies. Scenes d'amour saphique. Sonnets. Par le licencie Pablo de Herlagnez. Bruxelles. Poulet-Malassis. Petit in- 12. 6. Les Amies. Scenes d'amour saphique. Sonnets. Par le licencie, Pablo de Herlagnez. Segovie. 1870. Petit in-i2. 1890 37. Femmes. Imprime sous le manteau et ne se vend nulle part. in-i8. 1904 91. Hombres. Imprime sous le manteau et ne se vend nulle part. in-i8. 1907 94. La Trilogie erotique de Paul Verlaine. (Amies, Femmes, Hombres). Paris et Londres. in-8. Quinze eaux-fortes de Van Troizem et un avant- propos par un bibliophile verlainien. It was the first of these, Les Amies (The Friends) dealing with female friendships of a Lesbian nature, which caused the order of arrest of the publisher, the redoubtable A. P. Malassis, of Brussels, publisher, also of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai. The destruction of Les Amies was ordered by the courts of Lille, May 6, 1868. Lepelletier, in his biography of the poet, writes of this book with much naivete, as follows: "These Sonnets . . . are now in- offensive in consequence of later publications in France, both in prose and verse, by numerous writers on the same dangerous subject; but at that time (date of The Cult of Verlaine 37 publication), even for a Poulet-Malassis it was an audacious undertaking." Gautier said the inexpressible does not exist! Les Amies in their complete form are now included in most of Verlaine's works that is, in other than the English language. The pseudonym, Pablo de Herlagnez, bears witness that youth is often more circumspect than age. Les Amies was published when the poet was quite young. In 1899-1900 Vanier published in Paris five volumes of the poet's work. This edition consists of three volumes of verse and two of prose. The work is loosely edited and contains numerous errors. The gen- eral reader will find in the anthology of 1891, Choix de Poesies, (Charpentier et Fasquell. Paris, in-12) a good presentation of the poet's style. It contains also an excellent portrait by Eugene Carriere, and an admi- rable preface by Frangois Coppee. An edition de luxe of Fetes Galantes was published in 1903 by Le Maison du Livre. Paris, in-8. This contains twenty-four drawings and an equal number of ornamentations by Roubadi. Part second of the Bibliographic Verlainienne is given to notices of translations, critical studies, and the general diffusion of Verlaine's work, both in France and elsewhere. The notations in the chapter devoted to France and French speaking countries number two hundred and fifty-one. In Hommage a Verlaine (Paris. Messein. 1910. in-4) is found a book containing the appreciation of sixty-six of the foremost writers of France, both men and women. Verlaine's popularity in Spain is attested by an an- thology of translations into Spanish by M. Machado, published in Madrid in 1908. This collection em- braces practically all the poems worthy of preservation. There are several other Spanish anthologies less com- 38 Paul Verlaine plete. Jimenez writes in the Helios (October, 1903) Pablo Verlaine y su novia la luna (Paul Verlaine and his bride the moon. Llanto en mi corazon. . . (It weeps in my heart) is set to music by R. Villar from words by E. Diez-Canedo. (Madrid et Bilboa. Casa- Dotesio.) Bolivia, Argentina, Mexico, Santo Domingo and other Spanish-American countries know the poet through translations by native writers. In Italy Pica and Ermini have written much con- cerning the poet. There are no anthologies in book form. Lombroso pays his respect (?) to the poet in Nuovi studi sol genio (New studies on genius). Roumania has only one collection of the poet's work in the anthology of D. Anghel and St. O. Josif. (Bu- charest. "Minerva." 1903. in-i6.) In Russia Verlaine is popular and has been widely read, both in the French and Slavonic tongues. Brous- sov's anthology, published in Moscow in 1911, is the longest. Petrograd has a translation by F. Sologoub, 1908. Russia is also credited with a number of other, though shorter, collections. To English readers it appears singular that the cult of Verlaine should be so widespread in Germany. To those, however, who have closely followed the trend of German literature and thought during the past two decades, the fact is not surprising. Tournoux notations for Germany are as follows : 1900 564. O. Hauser. Paul Verlaine. Berlin. Concordia. Petit in-i6. 565. P. Wiegler. Baudelaire und Verlaine. Berlin. Behr's Verlag. in-i6. 1902 566. Paul Verlaine. Gedichte. Eine Anthologie der besten Ubertragungen. Herausgegeben von The Cult of Verlaine 39 Stefan Zweig. Berlin et Leipzig. Schuster ct Loeffler. in-i6. 567. E. Singer. Paul Verlaine. Gedichte. Vienne et Leipzig. Neue Literaturanstalt. in-i6. 568. H. Kirchner. Gedichte von Paul Verlaine. Halle. Hendel. in-i6. 569. O. Handler. Paul Verlaine. Ausgewahlte Ge- dichte. Strasburg. Heitz ct Muendel. in-i6. 571. R. Schaukal. Verlaine-Heredia. Nachdichtun- gen. Berlin. Oesterheld. in-8. 572. W. von Kalckreuth. Paul Verlaine. Ausge- wahlte Gedichte. Leipzig. Insel-Verlag. in-i6. Among other writers who have contributed to the diffusion of the poet's works in Germany are Arnold, Mehring, Ostwald, George, Gundlach, Abels, Bethge, Jaffe, Evers and Henckell. Nearly all the leading German magazines, as well as newspapers, have pub- lished notices upon Verlaine and his work. In Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Portugal and Bohemia, the poet has found appreciative readers. In English speaking countries, Verlaine has been appreciated but not widely read. Perhaps the irregu- larities of his conduct during his life attract the atten- tion of the public more than his work. George Moore, Arthur Symons, F. A. Cazals, John Gray, Ernest Dowson and Ashmore Wingate are prom- inent among English writers who have spread his fame. To George Moore, more than to any other, is due the credit of introducing him to the English public, and no one has written more interestingly of the poet. Until the present, Wingate's translation has been the longest in English. Symons' translations, all too few in num- ber, surpass in workmanship any heretofore published in English. These have appeared in the Mosher col- lection of gift books in America. In many ways the translation of Verlaine's poems by 4O Paul Verlaine Gertrude Hall, translator of Chantecler, is most satisfactory. It is to be regretted the collection is so abridged. Published by Stone & Kimball, Chicago, 1895. Verlaine has been known to American readers chiefly through this work. Throughout his life Verlaine was an interesting sub- ject for artists. Degas painted him in the Absinthe Drinker, and Zorn, Pearson, Cazals, Carriere and many others have contributed interesting studies. Cazals' drawing, which hangs in the National Museum of the Luxembourg, Paris, is most striking. Here the idealization is marked. The poet is no longer the man of enigmatic bumps and grotesque visage, but the in- mate of a hospital a neutral spot on the borderland of Death and all his being seems blurred with in- effable mystery. Numerous composers have set his songs to music poems so musical in themselves that music of another seems almost a profanation. In America John Alden Carpenter has set to music four poems. Published by Schirmer, New York. The poet's statue stands in the Luxembourg gardens, and an annual dinner is given in Paris to the memory of this great child for all poets are only men who have kept fresh in their hearts the fancies of child- hood and Verlaine kept also the weaknesses. BERGEN APPLEGATE. May, 1916. POEMS SATURNINE (POEMES S4TURNIENS) TO EUGENE CARRIERE J. HE Wise of old, as learned as men today, Believed, and this point yet is not quite clear, That they could read their future in the skies, And that each soul was guided by a star. (Men have railed much nor have they paused to think How foolish and deceiving laughter is Concerning all these mysteries nocturne.) Now those who have been born in SATURN'S reign, (Red planet dear to necromancers) have, Between them, so magicians used to say, Full measure of unhappiness and bile. The Imagination, infirm and weak, Distorts the subtile efforts of the Will, And in their veins the poisoned blood-stream flows Like lava, withering all before, so that The sad Ideal often is put out. So must they suffer, these Saturnians, So must die admitting they are mortal. Their plan of life was fashioned line by line According with an influence malign. P. V. [43 RESIGNATION CHILD I DREAMED ALWAY OF KOHINOOR, OF PAPAL SHOW AND PERSIAN SPLENDOR. HELIOGABALUS AND SARDANAPALUS ! My young desire created, 'neath domes splashed o'er With gold, 'mid sounds of music, perfumes fresh, The wild delirious harems of the flesh. Today more calm, with no less ardent mind, But knowing life and how its ways should lie, I am more fit to check my ancient folly, Though even yet I cannot be resigned. So be ! My taste for grandeur shows betime. But fie on phrases fine and fair things human I Henceforth I'll hate the merely pretty woman, The prudent soul and the resounding rhyme. [44] CHOIIA NEVERMORE EMEMBRANCE, REMEMBRANCE, WHAT WOULDST THOU? THE AUTUMN THRUSH ON LANGUID AIRS IS SADLY BLOWN, And the sun's wan rays monotonously thrown On yellowing fields where weary winds make moan. She and I were alone, walking and dreaming, Our hair and our thoughts in the wind over-bold. Suddenly she turned toward me, her soft eyes gleaming, "Which was your happiest day?" said her voice of pure gold With its timbre angelic, sonorous and sweet. And the smile that I gave for reply was discreet As the kiss that I gave her white hand in devotion. Ah ! The first flowers and their perfume one sipsl And the low sound with its charming emotion The first "yes" that comes from well-beloved lips. [45] 46 Paul Verlaine III AFTER THREE YEARS I PUSHED aside the narrow swinging gate To stroll within the garden green and small, Some morning rays the sun let sweetly fall, Spangling the flowers with jewels, as in state. Nothing has changed. I have seen all: the vine, The humble arbor with its rustic chairs. . . The jet of water playing silvery airs, And the old aspen with its plaint divine ! The roses nod, as of old, and one sees The lily proudly balance on the breeze. The larks that go and come I know them yet. I even found Valleda standing there At the walk's end, her plaster scaled, and bare, Frail, 'mid the pungent scent of mignonette. IV Vow .H ! the raptures ! the first mistresses ! Gold hair, blue eyes, and blossoms of the flesh. The odor of the bodies young and fresh. The fearful joy of the first shy caresses ! Has all forever gone sweet foolishness I And all those old time candors ! Ah, returning Poems Saturnine 47 Toward youth's lost spring they've fled, the winter spurning Of my ennui, disgust and sore distress ! So here am I at last, sad and alone, Cold as an altar colder than a stone Orphan, who knows no elder sister's love. O woman, whose caress my soul beguiled, Brunette, pensive and sweet, that naught can move, Who sometimes kisses gently, like a child! V LASSITUDE O A batallas de amor campo de pluma. (Gongora). THE sweetness, O the sweetness, O the sweetness ! Calm your fevered transports for a while, my charming ! Be like a sister, sometimes, peacefully warming, And soothing for one fleeting hour love's wild excess. Be languorous, making the drowsy caresses; All equal your sighs and your glances obsession. Go, the jealous embrace and pang of possession Are not worth the price of the long lying kiss. But in your dear heart of gold, you tell me, my child. The false passion goes sounding her clarion wild. Let her sound at her ease, hussy delirious. Put your forehead on my forehead, your hand in mine, And make me the oaths you will break, oh, so fine. And weep till the dawn, O little imperious ! 48 Paul Verlaine o VI MY FAMILIAR DREAM "FTTIMES I have this strange and penetrating dream : An unknown woman whom I love and who loves me, And who, though never changing, ever seems to be Another in whose eyes I see a well known gleam. She understands. My heart that doth transparent seem For her alone, alas, ceases also to be For her, alone, a problem ; and her tears fall free Upon my pallid brow, refreshing as a stream. Brunette, or blonde, or Titian-haired? I do not knowl Her name? 'Twas sweet I well recall when spoken low, As sweet as those beloved ones by Life exiled. Her glance is that of statues looks that vaguely thrill And for her voice calm, faintly sounding, gravely mild, It hath the echo of dear voices long since still. T< VII To A WOMAN O you these songs for the consoling grace Of your great eyes where laughs and weeps a dream; For your pure soul whose goodness sheds a beam To you these songs out of my deep distress. Poems Saturnine 49 What hideous nightmares haunt me in this place; Foolish, jealous, furious, and that seem To multiply like wolves whose white fangs gleam, Threatening the while to leave their bloody trace. Oh ! how I suffer, suffer and repine, So that the first grief of the world's first man Driven from Eden scarce compares with mine! And may your cares be like, or lighter than The swallows on a sky of afternoon, Dear on a fair September day, in tune. ETCHINGS I PARISIAN SKETCH T JL HE moon was spreading pale tints of zinc Obliquely let fall; And the rising smoke-shapes made one think Of a figure five o'er the house tops tall. The sky was gray, with a wind that sighed Like a sad bassoon; And afar a shivering tomcat cried With the strange frail notes of a ghostly tune. And I dreamed of Plato as I strolled on, And of Phidias, And of Salamis, and of Marathon, 'Neath the blinking eyes of blue jets of gas. 5 Paul Verlame III MARINE T JL HE deep sounding sea Throbs under the eye Of the sad moon on high Throbs mournfully. Whilst the lightning, sheer, Cuts brutally down Through heavens of brown With long zigzag clear. And the waves rising high With long convulsive bound, From reef to reef resound, Go, come, shine and cry. In the heavens, where flee The storm gods in wonder, Fierce roars the thunder Formidably. . . Ti IV EFFECTS OF NIGHT HE night. The rain. A pale sky cut with ragged jet Black towers and spires that are today the silhouette Of an old Gothic town, dim in the distant gray. The plain. A gibbet full of hanging rogues that sway Shaken and torn by cutting beaks of famished crows, Poems Saturnine 51 And dancing in the dark strange life-like jigs in rows, The while their dangling feet the wolves make pas- ture of. Some bushes with their scattered thorns, and then above Some hollies turning as with horror their wet leaves Now to the right, now left, as when the eye perceives Them on the sooty background of an artist's sketch. And then, around three livid barefoot prisoners stretch A host of halberdiers, like giants marching by; Whose straight set, harrow pointed pikes seem to the eye The rain's keen lances thrown from a black sky. GROTESQUES T, HEIR legs serve for horses, For all gifts the gold of their eyes, By the road of adventures They go, torn and despised. The wise, indignant, harangue them; Fools rail at their hazardous way; The children put out their tongues And the girls mock them all day. They are the ridiculous; Odious and malignant they seem. They have in the twilight The air of a bad dream. 52 Paul Verlaine On their bitter guitars These libertines strike the shrill string; Intoning the chants bizarre, Nostalgic and revolting. And at last in their eyes Laughs and weeps, or fastidiously nods, The love of things eternal The old dead and the ancient gods ! Go then, old vagabonds ! Wander, noxious creatures of old vice, Along abyss and strand Shut out from paradise ! For nature joins with man To punish rightly by and by, The melancholy pride that makes You march with forehead high. Venging on you the blasphemy Of vast hopes and violent intents; Bruising your foreheads curst With the rude elements. June burns, and December Freezes your flesh where the bones show through. The fever possesses your limbs Wracked and covered with dew. Poems Saturnine 53 Wounded and repulsed by all, When death shall seek you out in turn, Meager and cold, your carcasses Even the wolves will spurn! SOMBER LANDSCAPES I SETTING SUNS A FEEBLE dawn On the fields shining Pours the melancholy Of the suns declining. The melancholy Refrain of sweet songs, My heart forgetting To the suns' declining. And with strange Dreams in bands, Like the suns Declining on the strands, Phantoms (red ones) Defiling without ceasing Defiling, one by one, With the great suns Declining on the sands. 54 Paul Verlaine M II TWILIGHT OF MYSTIC EVE [EMORY, here with the Twilight Reddens and trembles on the distant rim Of ardent sky, where Hope glows like a bright Enduring flame, that, wavering and slim, Draws back and then expands like some far dim Mysterious garden; where flower on flower Dahlia, lily, tulip and buttercup Grow rank upon a trellis, blooming hour by hour In flaming rings; where noxious mists exude A perfume strong and warm, whose poison Dahlia, lily, tulip and buttercup Drowning my soul, my senses, and my reason, Unites, in one vast lassitude, Memory here with the Twilight. Poems Saturnine 55 III PROMENADE SENTIMENTAL J. HE sunset darted its level beam Where the wind-rocked water lilies dream; The water lilies calm and pale That shine where reeds are green and frail. And I wandered alone with a heart full sore, By the pool where the willows line the shore, Where the vague mist wakened a phantom tall That wept in the voice of the wild fowls' call, When they beat their wings by the willows white Where I wandered alone in the shrouding night Through the shadows that drowned the level beam Where the wind-rocked water lilies dream The water lilies calm and pale That shine where the reeds are green and frail. T IV VALPURGIS NIGHT, CLASSIC HIS is rather the sabbat of the second Faust, than the other; A rhythmic sabbat rhythmic as a lay Is rhythmic. Imagine a garden by Lenotre Correct, ridiculous and gay. Flower beds in circle in their midst, the fountains; walks Arrow straight and sylvan gods in marble; gods marine In bronze; with here and there a Venus coyly draped; The trees aligned; a bowling green; 56 Paul Verlaine Chestnut trees; and flowering plants forming a leafy dune; Some dwarfed rose bushes set about with loving care; Beyond, the yews well placed in triangle. The moon Of summer shining softly there. Midnight sounds, and wakens in the depth of this old park A melancholy air a heavy, slow and sadly listless air A huntsman's lay, sweet, low and melancholy as The hunting song in Tannhauser. Then comes a veiled and distant chant of horns, whose tenderness Of sense quite overcomes the soul's distress with sweet accords, Harmoniously discordant in their wild excess; And to this call of horns There comes a band of white-robed, slowly moving forms Diaphanous, on which the moon beams seem to play With opal tints among the shadows of the branches green A Watteau dreamed of by Raffet. And mingling with the soft green shadows of the trees, With gestures languishing and full of grief profound, These forms amid the bronzes begin a mystic dance A dance wherein they circle slowly round. These swaying spectres are they nothing but the thought Of some poor drunken bard or the remorse in his bewildered head Poems Saturnine 57 These spectres that with rhythmic tread dance on the turf? Or are they simply spirits of the dead? Are they then thy regrets, O dreamer who invites this hell, Thy thoughts, or thy remorse say? these creatures spurned? These spectres that some maddening impulse sways ; Or have the dead to madmen turned? No matter! they are always here, these phantoms of the brain, Making their mournful round and winding ever on ; Whirling like atoms in the clear rays of the sun, That in a moment suddenly are gone. Pallid and damp, the dawn o'ercomes them one by one The horns and all they pass with coming day Till nothing more remains nothing but a garden by Lenotre, Correct, ridiculous and gay. AUTUMN SONG .L /ONG sobbing winds, The violins Of autumn drone, Wounding my heart With languorous smart In monotone. 58 Paid Ferlaine Choking and pale, When on the gale The hour sounds deep, I call to mind Dead years behind, And I weep. And I, going, Borne by blowing Winds and grief, Flutter, here there, As on the air The dying leaf. T. VI THE SHEPHERD'S HOUR HE moon is red upon the eastern sky, In mists that dance the smoky meadow lies; Afar one hears the frog that shrilly cries Among the reeds where twilight zephyrs die. The marsh flowers close beside the water's edge; The poplars profile on the skies' far rim, Serried and straight, their specters vague and dim; While the wandering firefly seeks the hedge. The screech-owls waking take their noiseless flight, Beating the black air with their heavy wings; The sky is filled with dully shining things, White, Venus glistens it is Night. Poems Saturnine 59 VII THE NIGHTINGALE .L/IKE frightened birds loud calling in their flight, My memories beat upon me with their might. Beat on the yellow foliage of my heart, That, like a lonely alder grown apart, Mirrors its trunk and blighted branches wet In the dull violet waters of Regret That slow and ever mournfully flow near. And then the troubled sound made by a drear Moist breeze that mounts, then slowly dies so well That in the end I hear from out the dell Only the low clear voice celebrating The absent Loved One O so languishing ! Of that sweet bird, my first Love, whose warm lay Comes back again as in the first glad day; And in the splendor sad a glow where soon Rises all pale and solemnly the moon; A melancholy twilight full of summer, Of silence and obscurity no murmur Rocked on the azure that the sweet wind sweeps Only the tree that trembles the bird that weeps. was playing with her cat, Marvelous it was to see, Hands and paws, tit for tat, In the gloom so playfully. 60 Paul Verlame One was hiding then a pause ! 'Neath her mittens, finely made, Gleamed the agate-pointed claws, Keener than a razor's blade. Then the cat more tender grew, And its steel-like claws withdrew. But the devil watched with care. . . And the dimly lighted room Heard her laugh that circled where Four bright eyeballs cut the gloom. Ill SONG OF THE INGENUES E are the Ingenues With braided hair and eyes of blue Who live in old romances Unread save by the few. And arm in arm we go, For the day is not more bright Than the crystal of our thoughts, And our dreams are of the light. We run in the meadows Where our laughter never dies, From dawn until the vespers We chase the butterflies. And our shepherds' bonnets Keep us fresh and pale, And our dresses white Are so extremely frail. Poems Saturnine 61 The Caussades and the Richelieux, And the Knights Faublas all pass, But they only waste their ogling, Their salutes and sighs "alas!" For in vain these foolish mimics Can only break the nose Against the folds ironic Of our skirts, so like the snows. And thus our lofty station Disturbs these gallants all These warm imaginations, And leapers of the wall. Howe'er, with hearts fast beating, Clandestine thoughts between, We sigh to know the lovers Future and libertine. A V MONSIEUR PRUDHOMME SOLEMN man is he father, and mayor benign. His ears half buried in his collar high. His eyes Lost in a stupid dream a dream that ever flies And his embroidered slippers where the spring flowers shine ! Ah, what to him the golden stars the hedges fine Where in the shadow sings the bird? And what the skies To him, or the green meadow that in silence lies? For Monsieur Prudhomme has this laudable design 62 Paul Verlaine To make the rich Monsieur Machin his son-in-law. A pudgy, fat, respected botanist, he saw In every poet born a good-for-nothing cheat. These bearded, uncombed loafers, how he hates them whew ! They fill his soul with horror, all this shameful crew And flowery springtime shines upon his slippered feet ! T, SUB URBE HE little yews of the cemetery Tremble before the wintry blasts In the clear cold light. With a sound mournful and sad The crosses of wood over the new graves Vibrate with an abnormal tone. Silent as the streams, But full of tears as the floods, The sons, the mothers, and the widows Through the paths of the sad enclosure Wander, a slow procession, To the wounding rhythm of sobs. The yielding soil under their feet seems to cry. On high the huge clouds twist And tear themselves with fury. Penetrating as remorse Falls the heavy cold that o'erpowers, Seeming to reach even to the dead. To the poor dead, who are always Alone, and who tremble unceasingly, Forgotten by some or wept by others. Poems Saturnine 63 Ah, come quickly, O thou Springtime, With thy clear and caressing sun, With thy sweet birds chattering ! Make bloom with enchanting Glory the gardens and the fields That the rude winter holds in distress ! And, when the sunsets fall Spreading with gold the boundless sky, Soothe with sweet odors and with songs Deaf absent ones, your mournful sleep! SERENADE .L/IKE the voice of one dead yet singing From the depth of the grave, Hear thou, O my mistress, the stinging Shrill voice of thy slave. Open thy soul and thy ear to the sound Of my mandolin; For thee have I made, for thee to resound, This song cruel and thin. I sing to thine eyes, they are onyx and golden, No shadows are there; To thy bosom, as Lethe, the olden To the Styx of thy hair. Like the voice of one dead yet singing From the depth of the grave, Hear thou, O my mistress, the stinging Shrill voice of thy slave. 64 Paul Verlaine Then I praise over-much, as befitting, Thy flesh ever blest, Whose opulent perfume comes flitting Through my nights of unrest. And I sing of thy red lips, intently Lips red as a jewel; Of the martyrdom laid on me gently, My Angel my Ghoul 1 Open thy soul and thy ear to the sound Of my mandolin ; For thee have I made, for thee, to resound This song cruel and thin. A DAHLIA V^OURTESAN with hard breast and eye opaque and brown, That slowly opens like the calm eyes of a steer, Your thick stem shines like marble, newly cut and clear. Flower plump and rich, yet odorless, all your renown Is in your tempting body, serene as summer skies, That dully glows, displaying its rare harmonies. Nor have you flesh like those fair ones who all the day Strew on the summer fields the rows of new mown hay, Enthroning you, dumb idol, 'midst the incense light. Thus, the kingly Dahlia, clad in robes of splendor, Rises without pride his head that has no odor, Disdainfully, among the taunting jasmines white. Poems Saturnine 65 NEVERMORE O NWARD, my poor heart! Onward, my old ac- complice! Redress and paint anew each flaunting archway bold. Burn a rancid incense on the altars of false gold. Sow with flowers the borders of the precipice. Onward my poor heart! Onward, my old accomplice! Lift to God thy canticle, rejuvenated singer! Entone, hoarse organ, thy Te Deums rising high. Men, old before your time, paint the wrinkles 'neath your eye, Cover the yellow walls with tapestry maroon. Lift to God thy canticle, rejuvenated singer! Sound chimes ! Sound little bells ! Sound bells ! For my vain dream has taken shape and now I hold It pressed between my arms this Happiness of old, That flies when men approach this joy unspeakable. Sound chimes ! Sound little bells ! Sound bells ! Happiness has walked side by side with me. But Fate can ne'er desist, such is life's fitful scheme. The worm is in the fruit, the awakening in the dream, And remorse in love, such is the law of life. Happiness has walked side by side with me. IL BACIO (THE Kiss) T JL HE Kiss ! Pink hollyhock in Love's domain ! A lively tune on little keys of pearl Framed by the lips of some dear girl. An angel's song with love's well known refrain. 66 Paul Verla'me Sweet sounding Kiss! O melody divine! What luxury can match your drunkenness? From your bright cup man drinks his deepest bliss, And thus grows dizzy as from heavy wine. Like the Rhine's vintage, or a singer's rhymes, You soothe our pain old sorrows cold Die with the pout upon each purple fold Let Avon's swan or Goethe praise betimes. I, unworthy bard of Paris, offer this : These childish verses, sad bouquet at best; Be kind, and speed you on your gracious quest; Light on her stubborn lips and laugh thou Kiss ! IN THE WOODS OOME, the innocent or the lymphatic Find in the woods charms languorous or gay; Fresh airs, and odors warm. Happy are they! Others quail dreamers with fears ecstatic. They are happy ! I, nervous, that a dread Vague and oppressive ever seems to rule, I tremble in the forests like a fool Who fears an ambush or may fear the dead. These branches thick, like billows without bound, Where falls black silence and where falls a shade Still blacker all this mournfulness displayed, Fills me with horror, foolish, yet profound. Summer eves the redness of the sunsets Is sunk in the gray-blue of mist.s they paint With fire and blood; the angelus so faint Seems like a plaintive cry of sad regrets. Poems Saturnine 67 The winds rise warm and strong ; the ripples race With force renewed where the thick leaves are strewn On the high oaks that seem to importune, Then scatter like a fever into space. The night comes. The owl flies. This is the time When one dreams of the tales the old folks tell. . . Yonder, yonder, the quick springs in the dell Whisper like robbers plotting some dark crime. MARCO HEN Marco passed, the young men ran and turned To see her eyes, two Sodomites where burned The fires of Love, destroying without grace, Cold Friendship's lowly hut sad dwelling place. And all around danced perfumes without name, Where souls forever lost were weeping cast. Upon the red gold of her hair hung fast A charm, and from her robe strange music came, When Marco passed. When Marco sang, her hands upon the ivory Often evoked from depths too black to see, Primitive tunes, long lost and unprecise; Her rich voice rising in the paradise Of a vast symphony of wondrous dream, With ecstasy transported as it sprang Toward the known heavens, all who heard its tang Of silvery music sounding some vague theme, When Marco sang. When Marco wept, her tears and wild alarms Seemed to defy the very sound of arms; Her blood-red lips with deeper carmine shown, And her despair no human soul has known; 68 Paul Verlaine As though an oil-fed fire that flames on high, Her wrath shown redder as it higher leapt; Some lioness, one might have said, that kept Its forest wrath with ever blazing eye, When Marco wept. When Marco danced, her silken skirt, moire, Swept like the tides upon a summer day; And like a lithe bamboo her snowy thigh Bent with a grace that made her breasts reply. The lightning flashed; her marble limbs so free, Emphatically cynical, enhanced Their splendors terne : who listened heard entranced The sound of night winds blowing in a tree, When Marco danced. When Marco slept, what odors rich of amber Mixed with her flesh, filled and oppressed her chamber. The sheets revealed her back's exquisite line, And in the shadows of the curtains fine Her breath arose, light, rhythmical and slow. In calm and happy sleep her eyes were kept, And this sweet mystery threw a charm that swept The objects vaguely outlined, row on row, When Marco slept. But when she loved, the floods of luxury O'er ran as though a wound, open and free, Threw its red blood in many a smoking wave From the all cruel form whose crime Forgave. And o'er the soul's high walls a torrent came, Drowning the thought, sweeping with sad array All in its path, then bounding on its way As supple and devouring as a flame Then frozen lay. F&TES GALLANT (F&TES GAL ANTES) MOONLIGHT Y, OUR soul is like a landscape always glad, Peopled by merry maskers with bright eyes, Who play the lute and dance yet are half sad Beneath the tinsel of their quaint disguise. Who sing upon a strangely minor mode Of love's success and life so opportune, As they go tripping lightly on their road, Mingling their songs with rays caught from the moon, The moonlight rays so sad but O how fair! That make the drowsy birds dream in their trees, And sob with ecstasy the fountain clear That from its marble bed jets in the breeze. PANTOMIME JT IERROT, who gets nothing from Clitander, Empties a flagon failing to render Thanks and, being practical, cuts the pie. Cassandra, who is nearly lost to view, Weeps for her disinherited nephew Stage tears, that all ignore, with streaming eye. The rascal, Harlequin, plans to elope With Columbine a vain and foolish hope And then saucily pirouettes four times. Columbine dreams, strangely surprised to feel Emotion in the breeze's soft appeal, And voices in her heart. What foolish mimes ! 72 Paul Verla'\ne Ti ON THE GRASS HE Abbe wanders. And you, Marquis, Have donned, all awry, your perruque. This old wine of Cyprus, I see, Is exquisite less, Camargo, than your nuque. My flame. . . Do, mi, sol, la, si. Abbe, your cunning we unveil. Ladies, I die, indeed, for thee, If in trying to unhook a star I fail. I wish to be a little dog today. Let each one kiss his shepherdess, and soon One after the other! Gentlemen hey? Do, mi, sol. Ho ! Good evening, Mr. Moon ! THE WALK JL AINTED and powdered as in the old pastoral days, Frail amid the enormous bows of ribbon red, She passes 'neath the somber bower that gently sways Above a walk where some old moss-green seats are spread; With false affected ways and playful foolish air, Such as a petted gaudy parrot loves to wear. Her robe with its long train is blue and her fan bright Held by slim fingers decked with many a large ring, Is gay with quaint erotic scenes, so vague and light She smiles, as in a dream, at all the thoughts they bring. A blonde indeed. The saucy nose with lips to match. Mouth carmine, body plump, and proud, nor knowing why. Besides, a trifle wiser than the beauty-patch So deftly set beneath the rather silly eye. Fetes Gallant 73 THE PROMENADE trees, and sky where a pale light clings, Seem to smile on our costumes clear, Floating as light on the evening air As the nonchalant movement of wings. The sweet wind ruffles the fountain's pool, And the glow of the sun, seen through The shade of the limes on the avenue, Seems a fading blue in the twilight cool. Deceivers exquisite, coquettes that charm, Hearts tender but heedless of vows, Chaffing delightfully, with mock bows, Lover and loved one go arm in arm. Now a hand, O so tiny, lets fall A sharp slap one repays with a lip Lightly pressed on the pink and white tip Of a finger immeasurably small. For this fault so excessive, uncouth, One must suffer a look rather dry, That quite strongly contrasts, by the by, With the pardoning pout of the mouth. T. IN THE GROTTO HERE ! I'll kill myself at your feet, For my distress is infinite, And the terrible tigress of Hyrcania would be quite A lamb beside you prize so sweet! 74 Paul Verlaine Yes, indeed, thou cruel Clymene, This sword that in many a combat Has laid so many a Scipio and Cyrus flat, Will end my life and all its bitter pain! And yet, what need of it have I, Who would descend to the Elysian Fields? Love, pierced he not my heart with pointed steels When first upon me fell your flashing eye? Ti THE INGENUS HE high heels battled with long skirts And the uneven earth a breeze unbid Showing a shining limb, too often hid, And we, loving this play of flirts. A zealous insect, darting, flies To trouble the beauty 'neath the branches light; And this lightning of necks, glowing and white, Dazzled our youthful, foolish eyes. Evening fell a twilight of dim Fall; The belles leaned on our arms, dreamy and slow, Saying the words so startling and so low Our souls since then have trembled to recall. A CORTEGE MONKEY, beribboned and bland, Goes skipping before with quick pace, As she crumples a kerchief of lace In the folds of her finely gloved hand. Fetes Gallant 75 While a small negro boy, very black, Holds in his bare arms the long train Of her robe, that he strives to maintain, Smoothing the wrinkles back. The monkey cares naught but to gaze Intent on the lady's white throat, Whose contours, so dazzling, denote A torso, godlike, of old days. The negro boy, shy little wight, Ofttimes lifts the train rather high To gaze with mischievous eye On that which he dreams of by night. |P*3 She goes on her way by the stair, Unheeding the homage or gaze Of these insolent beasts or their ways, Disdaining to notice or care. THE SHELLS .DACH shell, incrusted, In the grotto where we knew love, Has its peculiarity. One has the purple of our souls Robbed from the blood of our hearts, When I burn and you take fire. Another affects your languors And your pallors when, wearily, You turn from my half-mocking eyes. This one counterfeits the grace Of your ear, and that one Your neck pink, short, and plump. But one amongst them troubles me. 7 6 Paul Ferlaine SKATING Y. ES, we were dupes, both you and I, To have our intrigues for our pains. Madame, such frenzy, by the by, Was Summer mounting to our brains. Spring had, however, I would say, Served, if my memory be not slack, To mystify our little play, But in a fashion not so black! For in the Spring the air is fresh, And then the budding rose is sent; And Love half opens to enmesh With odors almost innocent. In Spring the lilies, too, have thrown Their pungent breath upon the morn; And in the ardent sun is blown This fresh excitant, newly born. And then the mocking zephyrs bear A heady strange effluvium, That frees the heart from thoughts of care And makes the anxious spirit numb. That stirs to joy the senses five, Transports us to the very skies ; All which alone does not contrive To render us a bit more wise. This was a time with skies all clear, (Madame, do you recall those hours?) Fetes Gallant 77 The kisses given light as air From souls as fresh as were the flowers. Exempt from passion's foolish spell, Unmoved by any transports vain, How we enjoyed our days full well, Our souls untroubled without pain 1 Ah, happy moments ! Summer comes, Adieu, ye calm refreshing airs ! A heavy wind, voluptuous, Invests our being, unawares. And from each crimson cup the flowers Ripe odors on us seem to shed; While evil counsels fall in showers Upon us from the boughs o'erhead. And we acceded, this we know, And played the comedy unfeigned; This sort of foolish vertigo That lasted while the dog star reigned. Vain laughter tears without a cause, Yet with some pressing need how fraught I Half-sadness swooning without pause. And what vague longing in the thought! Autumn quite happily came by With his cold days and breezes rude, And in his manner brief and dry Corrected our bad habitude. And caused us, brusquely, too, I vow, Each to assume a rule approved; The guileless lover, I, and thou The ever worthy well beloved. . . 78 Paul Verlame Now Madame, Winter's here, and numb. Each bettor trembles for his purse. While here are other sleighs that come And dare dispute with us the course. Your two hands in the muff you've on, Sit firm and safely in your place. Away we go ! and soon Fanchon Will crown us victors in the race. FANTASTICS OCARAMOUCHE and Pulcinella, Met, by evil circumstance, Gesticulate, their shadows on the moon. However, the excellent doctor Of Bologna gathers leisurely Simples among brown herbs. While his daughter, piquant beauty, Under the elm boughs stealthily Glides, half-nude, in quest Of her beautiful pirate of Spain, For whom the languorous nightingale Proclaims the passion with head-splitting strain. A CYTHERE LIGHT pavilion lends Shelter where our gladness blends, Fanned by the rose-trees, friends. Fetes Gallant 79 Odors of roses faint, wander Thanks to the summer wind astir, And mix with perfume come from her. As her eyes foretold Her heart is warm and her lips o'erbold Bestow exquisite fevers, that tney hold. And Love crowns all complete Save hunger, sherbet and sweet Keeping the body's curves replete. AFLOAT JL HE star of the shepherd trembles In the black water, and the pilot Searches the tinder box in his pockets. This is the moment, Gentlemen, or never, To be audacious, and I put My two hands everywhere, henceforth. The chevalier Atys, who scrapes His guitar, to the ungrateful Chloris Throws a saucy wink. The abbe confesses in a low tone Egle. And the viscount grows disorderly, Giving the key of his heart to everyone. However, the moon has arisen, And the skiff in its brief course Glides gayly o'er the waters that dream. 8o Paul Verlaine THE FAUN ancient faun of terra-cotta built Laughs in the center of a plot of green, Presaging without doubt some ill result Of those dear moments of our life serene That led me on and led you on, you old Sad pilgrims with the melancholy mien, Unto this hour whose flying footsteps bold Go swirling to the sounding tambourine. MANDOLINE JL HE singers of serenades, And the beauties who listen, Exchange the usual banter Under the boughs that glisten. This is Tircis and this Aminta, This the eternal Clitander, This is Damis that for many A cruel one has made verses tender. Their short vests of silk, Their robes with glittering train, Their elegance, their joy, And their blue shadows, wane In the ecstatic whirlwind Of a moon pink and gray, And the mandoline tinkling, With the breezes at play. Fetes Gallant 81 TO CLYMENE M LYSTIC barcarolles, Romances without words, Dear, since thine eyes Color of skies, Since thy voice, strange Visions that derange And trouble the horizon Of my reason, Since the aroma famed Of thy pallor of the swan, And since the candor Of thine odor, Ah, since all thy being, Music that penetrates, Halos from angels' tombs, Tones and perfumes, Have on rich cadences Of its correspondences Induced my heart subtly, So let it be ! LETTER ITHDRAW your eyes, Madame, for by the cares Imperious (I take all the gods to witness) I languish and I die, as is my custom In like cases. And true, my heart is bitter, Across the unrest your shadow brings, 82 Paul Verlaine Daily in my thoughts, in my dreams at night, And, by night and by day, adorable, Madame I Ah well, at last my body disappears, And in its place my soul becomes a shade That in its turn, amid emotions sad, Embraces vain and numberless desires, Is lost within your shadow for all time. Till then, consider me your slave, my dear. Madame, do all behave themselves with you? Your parrot, cat, and dog? The society Is it always pleasant, and this Silvanie Whose black eye I had loved were yours not blue, And who, sometimes, would make me signs, parbleu! Is she the trusty friend she was of old? Madame, an impatient project haunts me. This is to conquer the whole earth with all Its treasures rare, to put them at your feet Unworthy gage to prove my love the peer Of those most high and celebrated flames Whose ardent hearts have lighted up the past ! Less loved was Cleopatra, by my faith, Of Antony and Caesar, than you by me ! Do not doubt it, Madame. I would have fought Like Caesar for a smile, O Cleopatra ! Like Antony, staked all upon a kiss. Dear friend, adieu. Already too much talk. One reads a letter in so short a space It almost seems a waste of time to write. Fetes Gallant 83 INDOLENTS B AH ! In spite of zealous destiny Let's die together shall we? You and I. The proposition's rare. The rare is good. Let's die, my own, Like those in the Decameron 1 Ha ! Ha ! What lover ! How bizarre ! Bizarre, I do not know ! But lover Without guile, assuredly ! Let's have it over- Dying, if you wish together ! Sir, indeed you're far too bold, And then you do not love, but talk of gold. Let's just be still if you would rather. But Tircis and his Dorimene, This evening sitting on the green Near by a laughing rustic pair, Made this unpardonable mistake Of hindering death for love's dear sake. Ha! Ha! What lovers! How bizarre! COLUMBINE JL/EANDER, the fop, Pierrot with a hop That would, Flea-like, clear a bush; Cassandra 'neath her plush Drawn hood; 84 Paul Verlaine And then Harlequin, Rascal with a grin Grotesque, Costumed like a fool, With glowing eyes that rule His masque; Do, mi, sol, fa, mi, All these people flee, Or worse; Laugh and dance as well, Before a saucy belle Perverse, Whose eyes malign Like a cat's eyes shine, Guarding the while Her charms and crying "Down" "Paws down!" with a frown And smile. These, they go perforce, Sad, insipid course Of stars. Oh! Tell me toward What fell, untoward Disasters The implacable child Leads her beguiled Young troupes? With lifted skirt in hand, Ah, whither with her band Of dupes? Fetes Gallant 85 THE FALLEN CUPID HE wind the other night o'erturned the little Love That, in the most mysterious corner of the park, Mischievously bent his bow in the shadows dark Where we two dreamed, while Love watched from above. The wind the other night had thrown it low ! The marble broke and scattered. Ah, what shame To see the pedestal and read the artist's name Painfully, where trees their shadows throw. Oh! it is sad to see this pedestal of stone Standing so solitary, and in my dream The melancholy thoughts that go and come, seem To evoke a fatal future, drear and lone. Oh ! it is sad, but you, why are you gay, Viewing this doleful sight with frivolous eye? Amused to watch the purple butterfly Above the ruin that obstructs the way. SOURDINE V^/ALM in the half-day Where deep branches abound, Let us mingle our love With silence profound. Let us melt our two souls In ecstasy fine With the vague languors Of shrub and of pine. 86 Paul Verlaine Half close your eyes, Cross your arms on your breast, With the heart sleeping, Peacefully rest. Welcome the breathing wind That is rippling so sweet The waves of red grasses That move at your feet. And, when the dim twilight Solemnly falls, Voice of our sorrow The nightingale calls. I COLLOQUY SENTIMENTAL N the old park solitary and cold They pass two forms that loved of old. Their eyes are dead and their lips are dumb, If they speak, none hears the words that come. In the old park solitary and vast Two specters have evoked the past. Do you remember our old love? Yet, Why wish me to recall it? I forget. Your heart beats only to my name? this would I know. And do you see my soul in dreams? No ! Ah, the good days the joy unspeakable When our young lips were met. It's possible. Fetes Gallant 87 Oh, they were blue, the heavens, and hope was high ! Now hope has vanished, toward the blackened sky. Thus through the tangled weeds they walk, And save the night alone, none hears them talk. THE GOOD SONG (LA BONNE CHANSON) T, HE morning sun makes warm and golden, too, The wheat and rye still wet with early dew. The heavens keep their freshness of the night. One wanders out, no other task in sight, Save by the river's tossing sedge of gold To trace a grassy path 'neath alders old. The air is fresh. A bird goes flitting by, Some hedge-fruit in its beak or wisp of rye. And in the stream its shadow follows fast. Naught else. The dreamer loves this landscape vast, For the soft light has suddenly caressed His dream of happiness and blessed The charming memories a maiden brings; Vision in white that scintillates and sings. And what he dreams perhaps would make one smile- The sweet Companion he has found at last, Whose soul his soul weeps for as days go past. A II .LL grace and all light, In the flush of her sixteen years, She has the innocence bright Of a child without fears. Her eyes are full of youthful fire, Innocent yet wise, that nothing miss; Awakening the strange desire Of an immaterial kiss. 92 Paul Verlaine Her hand, so little and so light, A humming bird within it could not hide, Captures, without hope of flight, The heart in secret, short of pride. She is intelligent as well ; And with a noble soul to meet all need. As pure as she is spiritual. And what she says 'twere well to heed. If sometimes foolish jokes amuse, And make her laugh with heartless glee ; Yet will she be herself a Muse Forgiving to the point of amity; Even to the point of love who knows? Maybe, Out of regard for a poor bard with pleading eyes, Who begs, beneath her window, as you see Audacious one ! a worthy prize Indeed, of his song good or bad! Yet, proof sincere, whose every look reveals Without false shame or heart unduly sad, The sweet discomfort that a lover feels. Ill I N her ruche-bordered dress of green and gray, One day in June when I was full of care, She came before my eyes, quick smiling, fair, I who admired, nor feared her ambush gay. She came and went, returned a while, and spoke Delicate and grave, ironical and tender; And on my soul so full of visions somber, A ray from her all joyous presence broke. The Good Song 93 Her voice that was so musical and low, Went hand in hand with her sweet spirit, bold Yet guileless, when her charming babble told A heart as gay as good, one might well know. And thus was I though I would fain dissemble With a revolt, put instantly away In this small Fairy's power, who since that day I supplicate in fear and even tremble ! IV dawn awoke and sunrise now is here, Since having flown so long hope turns at last And flies toward me who called through all the year; Since all this joy is mine, and sorrow past, O let me now forget the bitter thought, The evil dreams, be they forever gone. The irony my scornful lips had caught, The cruel words my spirit dwelt upon. Away with fist tight-clenched and anger's sway That rose against the fools we daily pass; Away with spite abominable away Forgetfulness found in the fateful glass! For 'tis my wish now that a Soul of light Has in my night profound thrown its soft rays Of early love, immortal as 'tis bright, By favor of her smiles and graceful ways, It is my wish, such light her fair eye hath, But to be led by her, what e'er forebodes ; To walk upright along the mossy path When rocks and gravel strew the beaten roads. 94 Paul Verlaine I wish to walk straightforward now through Life, My task in view, nor stepping once aside; Without remorse or envy, without strife, Nor fearing aught, with Her close at my side. And I will sing my songs along the route To shorten the rough road they will suffice. She, too, will listen, pleased without a doubt, And truly this will be my Paradise. B EFORE thou takest flight, pale Star of dawn sublime, A thousand quail Singing, singing in the thyme. Turn toward the poet, mark His eyes how full of love; The lark Mounts to the sky above. Turn, thy loving glance employ, It drowns the dawn in blue ; What joy Amidst the ripe wheat wet with dew! And make my thoughts to shine Yonder, O far away! How fine The dew that glistens on the hay. In the sweet troubled dream, so chaste Of my dear sleeping one. . . Haste, haste, For here's the golden sun. The Good Song 95 VI J. HE white moon Shines in the wood; From each branch Comes a voice Under the boughs. . . O well-beloved. The pool reflects, Profound mirror, The silhouette Of the black willow Where the wind weeps. . . Dream on, this is the hour. A vast and tender Peacefulness Seems to descend From the firmament That a star tints. . . This is the exquisite hour. T VII HE landscape from the curtained window square Speeds swiftly past while all the wide plains wear, With the water, the wheat, the trees, and sky, An aspect strange a whirlpool rushing by; The telegraph's slim poles go tilting o'er, With all their wires quite like a music score. 96 Paul Verla'me A smell of burning coal and hissing steam. A noise as of a thousand chains that seem To bind a thousand giants, lashed, that howl; And then the long-drawn hooting, like an owl. Ah, what to me all this, since in my eyes And joyous heart a white-robed vision lies; Since her sweet voice for me resounds once more, And since a Name, well loved, blends with the roar Like a smooth pivot that might well reproach The brutal rumble of the noisy coach. VIII A SAINT in her bright halo, A chatelaine in her tower; All that the human word may know Of grace and love's sweet power. The note of golden splendor Of a horn in woodland ways, Linked with pride, deep and tender, Of queens of other days. With this the glowing sense Of triumph when she smiled; The blush the swan-like innocence- Half woman and half child. Face pearl and pink, that brings To mind some fair patrician dame : I see, I hear all these proud things In her Carlovingian name. The Good Song 97 IX .ER right arm, in a gesture amiable and sweet, Reposes about the neck of her little sister, While her left arm follows the rhythm of her skirt. Truly, a happy thought seems to possess her mind, For her eyes so fresh and her mouth that smiles Witness a joy that mingles with her spirit. Oh, her thought, exquisite and fine! what is it? How beautiful, how lovable, and how good! For this portrait her infallible taste has chosen The most simple pose, also the very best. Standing, the look straight, bare-headed; and her dress Just long enough in this that it discloses A trifle, 'neath its jealous folds, the charming tip Of a foot maliciously imperceptible. X JL IFTEEN long days to come and six weeks gone Already ! Among human agonies The saddest of them all is to be far. One writes, repeats his love; or has a care To evoke each day, gesture, voice and eyes Of her on whom his happiness relies. To talk alone with her in dumb appeals. But all one thinks, and all the things one feels, And all his words, thus spoken, grave or glad, Persist in seeming colorless and sad. Oh! absence! most inclement of all ills! Consoling one's self with the phrase that thrills, And then to dip the sad depths of one's thought For comfort and to find all there is naught, Hope-sick to draw up only bitter things ! 98 Paul Verlame Then, hard and cold, a barbed iron that stings, Swifter than bird or bullet or the thin Sharp south sea wind tipped with a fish's fin, Here comes, like to an arrow, the suspicion Shot by the archer Doubt, the evil one. And is this true? as touched by haunting fears, I read her letter, my eyes full of tears. Her letter, with the sweet avows it brings ; Is she not then distraught by other things? Who knows? While time for me, slow and morose, Flows like a stream along its muddy course, Perhaps her mouth a happy smile begets, Perhaps she may be glad perhaps forgets? And I re-read her letter. Vague regrets ! XI HIS hard proof soon will have an end, Smile, O my heart your fortunes mend. Now they are passed, the days of fears, When I was sad sad unto tears. Count not the moments, O my soul, Time yet must take a little toll. The bitter words, I've killed them all, Dark specters banished past recall. My eyes like weary exiles are That only see her from afar; My ears are hungry but to hear Her golden voice so soft and clear; The Good Song 99 And all my being, all my love, My only thought and dream doth move Me to acclaim the happy day When I shall see my fiancee! XII [O, song, on wings wind-blown, And tell her with thy art : A joyous light has shown Within my faithful heart. Cast out with sainted ray, Love's shadows all have fled; Within my heart is day, Pride, fear, and doubt, are dead. Long silent, dumb, and dark, Hearest thou? The gladness rings Like the swift-winged lark That in the clear sky sings. Go then, my song, today, Thy voice she'll not disdain. Welcomed, she'll bid thee stay, Since you return again. XIII .S yesterday they talked, our elders wise, My eyes kept ever seeking your dear eyes ; And your soft glance was often toward me thrown The while the stupid talk flowed gravely on. ioo Paul Verlaine Beneath the banal sense of phrases caught, My errant love kept ever near your thought; And when you spoke, as though without design, My quick ear caught your secret that was mine. For the voice, like the eyes of This that makes You sad or joyous, a dear secret takes And, spite of every effort you essay, Gives your emotions to the light of day. Now, yesterday I parted, drunken quite: Is this a vain hope that my heart holds tight, A vain hope, false and sweet fain would I know? Nay, nay, it is not so it is not so ! T, XIV HE fireside and the lamplight's level ray, Dreaming, hand raised to brow at close of day; Eyes that in eyes beloved their image see ; Hour when the books are closed and steams the tea. Sweetness to feel, at last the evening o'er, The charmed fatigue and waiting we adore Of nuptial shadows and of the sweet night. Oh! All these joys my tender dreams invite Without release, though vain delay bespeaks, Mad of the months and furious of the weeks. The Good Song 101 XV A. .LMOST I fear, if truth be said, So much my life becomes enlaced With that all radiant thought that graced My soul, the summer that has fled; So fast your image, dear, I own, Lives in this heart that's all for you; My heart uniquely jealous, too, To love and please but you alone. Grant me your pardon, if in awe, I frankly speak as though you heard, To think that but a smile a word From you henceforth must be my law; That it sufficeth but a sign, A word, a trembling of an eye, To put my joy forever by, Take my illusions so divine. And still I would not see thee, thence The future is too somber hued, With pains all numberless imbued, Yet, ever through a hope immense, Plunged in a joy supremely due, I say again and always say, In spite of every mournful way: That I love you that I love you! IO2 Paul Verlaine T, XVI HE noise of taverns and the black mud of the sidewalks, The torn leaves fluttering in the wintry air; The omnibus, a storm of rusty iron and mud That creaks, unpleasantly, on its four grinding wheels And rolls its slowly burning eyes of green and red; The workmen going to their clubs and smoking each His short clay pipe 'neath the very nose of the police; The dripping roofs, the sweating walls, the slippery walks, The asphalt bulging and the filthy, muddy rills ; Such is my route and at the end is paradise. XVII J.S it not so? Despite what others say, Who merely envy us our present joys, We two will go with humble pride our way. Is it not so? We take the modest path, Happy and slow, that smiling Hope employs, Unmindful of the ways the cold world hath. Lost in our love, as in some leafy dell, Our hearts will be in their deep tenderness Two nightingales that sing the day farewell. As for the World, though it be fair or dark, What matters it? Perhaps it may caress, Perhaps in harming take us for the mark. The Good Song 103 And thus united by the ties most dear, Clad in an armor that can all withstand, We two shall smile and, smiling, nothing fear. Unmindful save of what the Fates bestow, We two shall walk our pathway hand in hand, With that high hope and youthful soul aglow Of those who truly love is it not so ? XVIII JL HESE stormy times serve to remind That marriage of the souls should bind Our hearts in happy unison. And in this hour of sad unrest 'Twill put our courage to the test To bear life's burdens one by one. And, facing this, 'twere well we two Strive but to keep this thought in view: To hold ourselves, thrice happy pair, In ways upright, conduct austere, So that our love shall always wear A proud and a defiant air. Why should I speak of this meanwhile? O thou the goodness thou the smile! Hast thou not counsel, too, that ranks O'er mine most loyal, strong and brave? Whose laughter mocks my visage grave, And still to whom my heart cries : Thanks 1 IO4 Paul Verlame XIX , it shall be a day of summer, dear, The glowing sun, accomplice of my joy, His rays, 'mid silks and satin, will employ To make your beauty still more rare, more clear. The far blue sky outspread like some high tent, Shall tremble sumptuously in lengthening folds Above our happy brows whose pallor holds Expectancy, with joy and gladness blent. And when the evening comes with its sweet air That loves to play, caressing, in your veils, The peaceful stars that rise above the dales Will smile upon the happy wedded pair. XX I WENT by paths where danger hides, Uncertain windings, far withdrawn; But your dear hands were my sole guides. If o'er the eastern sky was drawn One feeble glow of coming day, Your glance made morning of the dawn. No noise to cheer the traveler's way, Save his slow footsteps, sounding far. Your voice said: "Courage and away." My fearful heart no longer gay Wept with me on the road, alas ! But love, delicious vanquisher, Our joyful meeting brought to pass. The Good Song 105 XXI INTER has gone : the balmy light indeed Dances, from earth unto the heavens clear. Oh ! well may the heart the most sad accede To the immense joy scattered in the air. Even this Paris wearisome and ill, Seems to acclaim the young suns that unfold, And with a mighty welcome's joyous thrill Extends a thousand arms from roofs of gold. I've had, a year, the springtime in my soul, This green return of flowers so sweet to feel, As though a flame about a flame might roll, Has put for me ideal on ideal. The blue sky is more vast and high, and crowns The air immutable where laughs my love; How all is fair and how my path abounds With hopes that have their turn hopes born above. Let summer come, and autumn that awaits Winter's return! Each season in its way Will charming be, O Thou who decorates The fantasy and motive of this lay! ROMANCES WITHOUT WORDS (ROMANCES SANS PAROLES) I FORGOTTEN AIRS I Le vent dans la plaine Suspend son haleine. (Favart.) T J. HIS is the languorous ecstasy, This is the amorous fatigue, This is the wood that rejoices, When, in the hush of the breeze Sings from the trembling trees The choir of little voices. O the frail and fresh murmur, This warble growing firmer, This resembles the sweet cry Of the wind-shaken grass, Or, under the waters that pass, The slow turning pebbles' low sigh. And this soul that laments Plaintive intense, Is this not ours, filled with care? Is this not mine, say, and thine, This sad anthem divine, Humble and low on the air? II VAGUELY guess, across a murmur drawn, The sound of voices, long since still, alas ! And in this glimmer, fair musicians pass, And love, the symbol of a future dawn. [109] no Paul Ferlaine And soul and heart, that blend in mad desire, Seem like an eye that has a vision double, Where trembles, on a weary day of trouble, The haunting tune of every poet's lyre. O death this death that must alone endure, This love that goes in fear that once was ours. The young hours balancing with the old hours, And dying, gently swinging, slow and sure ! Ill I II pleut doucement sur la mile. (Arthur Rimbaud.) _T weeps in my heart As it rains on the town. What is this languor That weighs my heart down? Soft drip of the rain On the roofs and the ground, For a heart that is weary O sweet is the sound! It weeps without right And heart-sick is my song. What! Is there no treason? This sorrow is wrong! And, knowing not why, It is well the worst pain, Without love or hate That my heart has such pain. Romances Without Words ill Son joyeux, importun, d'un clavecin sonore. (Petrus Borel.) J. HE piano, kissed by a hand soft and frail, Shines vaguely in the twilight pink and gray. Whilst lightly as a bird's wing, in a dale, An old tune, very feeble, sweet and gay, Circles discretely, ere its faint notes fail, The room perfumed by Her since that far day. What is this sudden rocking in my heart This stirring of my inmost soul profound? What wouldst thou of me? ghostly song thou art! What is thy wish, thou sweet uncertain sound, That, dying, seeks the window to depart The garden window, open near the ground? VI B EHOLD the dog of Jean Nivelle That snaps beneath the sentry's eye The cat of the good dame Michel Franc.ois-les-bas-bleus laughs to cry. While for the public scribe's concern, The moon her misty light lets fall, Where Angelique with Medor turn To deepest green on their old wall. Here comes La Ramee, a bold knight, Who swears as a King's soldier will. Beneath his coat, ill-famed and white, His heart no joy could ever fill 112 Paul Verlaine Because the bakeress . . . She ? For shame ! Bernant Lustucru, her old man, Has often crowned, betimes, her flame . . . Children, Dominus vobiscum! Hold ! In her long robe all in blue, That makes frou-frou in satin clear, This is a courtesan parbleu! 'Twere well that you should praise her chair. Be he philosopher or knave, This gold in heaps doth make one cross; Such riches, insolent, might pave The world with notes by Monsieur Loss ! Stop, you rascal, hold your place, you Little shopman, little abbe, gay; Little bard who ever tries to woo The rhyme that always goes astray! However, here's the night at hand . . . And never weary all the day With being innocent and bland, Frangois-les-bas-blues still is gay. VII H .OW sad how sad my heart today, Because of One so far away. For me, no balm can e'er console, Who made an exile of my soul. For me whose soul, for me whose heart, Willed we should ever live apart. Romances Without Words 113 For me, no balm can e'er console, Who made an exile of my soul. My heart so sensitive, so miserable, Said to my soul: Can it be possible? Is't possible said it, the while This proud exile, this sad exile ? My soul said to my heart: Know I, Myself, whence comes this snare, or why; To be with her, yet an exile, And long, long gone from her the while ? VIII J.N the interminable Weariness of the land The uncertain snow Shines like the sand. The sky is of copper, Its light is a swoon, I seem to see living And dying the moon. Like floating gray clouds In the wood lying near, The mist-shrouded oaks Of the forest appear. The sky is of copper, Its light is a swoon, I seem to see living And dying the moon. H4 Paul Verldine You broken-voiced crow, You meager wolves, too, In the bitter north wind What will happen to you? In the interminable Weariness of the land The uncertain snow Shines like the sand. IX The nightingale from the height of a branch, looking down, thinks to have fallen in the river. He is at the summit of an oak, yet hath he fear of drowning. (Cyrano de Bergerac.) A HE shadow of trees in the vaporous stream, fog- kissed, Fading, dies like the mist; Whilst in the shady depths of the real branches, above, Mourns and complains the dove. How in this landscape vague, O traveler pale, Thou too art mirrored, frail; Whilst in the highest leaves, with mournful sound, Sadly thy hopes are drowned! Romances Without Words 115 BELGIAN LANDSCAPES "Conquestes du Roy" (Vieilles estampes). WALCOURT Vy THE charming Bricks and tiles 1 For the lovers, Little aisles. Hops and vines, Leaves and flowers. For frank drinkers, Shady bowers. Beer and clamors, Taverns clear; To all smokers Servants dear. Gay highroads And stations near. Good wandering Jews, What cheer, what cheer! CHARLEROI I N the black grass The Kobolds go. The wind profound Must weep, I know. n6 Paul Verlaine What is this scent? The oats whistle, And bush and thistle Strike those who pass. More hovels than Fine homes, 'tis said. What horizons Of forges red! What does one smell? The depots thunder, The eyes wonder, Where's Charleroi? Sinister odors ! Ah, what is this, Like a sistrum's Noisy kiss? Hold your breath! Now all is brutal! The sweat of men The cries of metal! In the black grass The Kobolds go. The wind profound Must weep, I know. Romances Without Words 117 BRUSSELS SIMPLE FRESCOS T. HE flight is verdant and pink Of the fences and hills; In the twilight the lamp fills Our coach with a blur indistinct. A light in the valley still clings, Sweetly gilding the copse; Some little shrubs without tops Where a feeble bird sings. Sad, in a mild way, the burning Touch of Autumn there; And my old languors, returning, Are cradled on the air. II T . HE pathway runs on without end Yonder where the heavens blend Over this sweet glade. Do you know that it would be Good to lie beneath this tree In the secret shade? Some gentlemen in careful dress Who they are one well might guess, Friends without a doubt n8 Paul Ferlaine Of the Royer-Collards go On their way toward the chateau. Would it were my route ! The old chateau is all in white, With, at its side, the somber light Of the setting sun. Fields around. . . Here all is blest, Oh ! that here our love could nest When our day is done. Cafe of the Young Fox, August, 1872. HORSES OF WOOD Par Saint-Gille, Viens-nous-en t Mon agile Alezan. (V. Hugo.) URN, turn, wooden horses, turn. Turn a hundred times a thousand times The hautboy sounds, the music chimes Turn, turn, wooden horses, turn! The nurses fat the soldiers gay Go whirling round with happy smile; In Cambre's wood this is the style : Two masters for each prancing bay. Turn, horses of their heart, turn round; For here the watching sharper stands With twinkling eye and cunning hands; Turn to the piston's boastful sound. Romances Without Words 119 It makes one tipsy thus to spin On horses with such crazy tread; Upsets your stomach and your head, Both good and bad, without, within. Turn, wooden horses, speed away. No need to use the spurs on you To make you gallop, two by two; Turning without the hope of hay. Haste, horses of their soul, for here The twilight deepens into night; And dove and pigeon will unite Far from madame and from the fair. Turn, turn, the sky in velvet sheen And golden stars is slowly dressed; The lover's parting kiss is pressed Turn to the sounding tambourine. MALINES T JL HE winds that toward the meadows fly, Would pick a quarrel with the vanes Upon the roof of purple slate The chateau of some magistrate How pleasing to the traveler's eye ! Like scenes from fairyland we pass Where ash-trees form a leafy bower And, outlined on the distant plain, Are vast Saharas of ripe grain, Alfalfa, clover and white grass. Our train, that speeds in silence, flies Along the peaceful shady lanes. I2O Paul Verlame The cattle sleep. Repose, sweet kine, Where the wide plain extends its line Beneath the vaguely tinted skies. We glide, without a murmur, on ; Each coach is like a chamber, where One speaks low . . . and looking through The window we enjoy this view, Made to the wish of Fenelon. WATER COLORS GREEN .ERE are the fruits, flowers, leaves, and branches meet; And then here is my heart for your delight. Oh, tear it not with your white hands so sweet; I would these humble gifts might charm your sight. I come to you, my fever-heated brow Swept by the morning wind, all wet with dew. Oh, at your feet my weary form allow, There but to rest and there to dream by you. On your young breast let rest my aching head That rings with your last kisses, warmly pressed; Until the tempest pass, on that fair bed, Oh, let me sleep a little, while you rest. SPLEEN T JL HE roses were all red And the ivy was all black. Dear, if you but turn your head, All my despairs come back. Romances Without Words 121 The sky was too blue too tender, The sea too green and the air sweet, too. I fear always ah, to wait and wonder ! What flight atrocious of you. I am tired of hollies green, Of the box-tree and the yew, Of the landscape's distant sheen, And of all, alas, save you. STREETS JL/ET'S dance a jig! Always I love her pretty eyes, More clear than starlight in the skies, What haunting mischief in them lies! Let's dance a jig! She has a fashion quite apart, To disconcert a lover's heart, And with a truly charming art! Let's dance a jig! But I find better this, the power Of kisses on her mouth in flower, Since she is dead to me this hour. Let's dance a jig! 122 Paul Verlame Ah, I remember the old days, Those hours, and all her gracious ways. This is the best, that with me stays. Let's dance a jig! WISDOM (SAGESSE) VII HE false fair days that shone all day, my weary soul, Now come to vibrate in the copper-colored West. Go, close thine eyes, poor soul, and seek at once thy rest. Fly from temptation's snare. The infamies unroll. All day they burned in long red streaks of fiery hail, Beating to earth the grapes upon the hills nearby; Cut down the valley's harvest, ravished the clear sky The blue, the singing sky that bideth thee avail. Turn pale and get you home with folded hands. What sorrows ! If all our yesterdays should eat our good tomorrows? If the old folly were again to seek us out? These memories of sins long past, need must I slay? They make a final charge, the most supreme, no doubt. Oh, go and pray against the storm. Go thou and pray 1 IX ISDOM of Louis Racine, how I envy it. O, not to have followed the lessons of Rollin. Or been born in the century in its decline When the radiant, setting sun made life so fit. When Maintenon threw upon France with shadows sweet, The peace of her bonnets of linen, white and fine. [125] 126 Paul Verlaine When the friendless were sheltered in a spirit benign, When study was followed, and prayer, as it were meet. When poet and doctor simply and honestly Communed with the fervor of humble novices, Serving at Mass and singing the offices. And, the springtime come, having care only To go in Auteuil to gather lilies and roses Like Garo, praising God, who all disposes. X O ! 'Twas Gallican Jansenist this century glad ! Toward the Middle Ages, enormous and delicate. I would my weary heart in grief might navigate Far from these days of carnal joy and pleasures sad. King, politician, monk, artisan and chemist; The architect, soldier, doctor and advocate. What time! O that my shipwrecked heart, once more elate, Might feel this ardent supple force, so sadly missed 1 And there that I had part, in some way, with the kings; Or elsewhere, no matter, save the thing were vital; That I were as a saint and good, thinking high things, In that great moral time of high theology, Guided by the unique folly of the Cross, Upon your wings of rock, O foolish Cathedral ! Wisdom 127 II o MY God, them hast wounded me with love, And the wound is vibrating still : O my God, thou hast wounded me with love. O my God, I am stricken with thy fear, And the burn that quivers is yet here : O my God, I am stricken with thy fear. O my God, I have known that all is vile, And thy glory in me is installed : O my God, I have known that all is vile. Drown my soul in the floods of thy Wine, Found my life in the Bread of thy table : Drown my soul in the floods of thy Wine. Here is my blood that I have not poured, Here is my flesh unworthy of suffering : Here is my blood that I have not poured. Here is my forehead that only has blushed, For a stool for Thy feet adorable : Here is my forehead that only has blushed. Here are my hands that have not toiled, For the ardent coals and the incense rare : Here are my hands that have not toiled. Here is my heart that has beat but in vain, To palpitate on the thorns of Calvary: Here is my heart that has beat but in vain. 128 Paid Verlaine Here are my feet, frivolous voyagers, To run to the cry of thy grace : Here are my feet, frivolous voyagers. Here is my voice, noise shameful and lying, For the reproaches of Penitence : Here is my voice, noise shameful and lying. Here are my eyes, lighted with error, To be put out by tears and prayers : Here are my eyes, lighted with error. Alas, Thou, God of oblation and pardon, What is the depth of mine ingratitude! Alas, Thou, God of oblation and pardon. God of terror and God of sanctity, Alas, this black abyss of my crime : God of terror and God of sanctity. Thou, God of peace, of joy, and of happiness, All my fears, all my ignorance: Thou, God of peace, of joy, and of happiness. Thou knowest all this, all this, And that I am poorer than any one. Thou knowest all this, all this. But this that I am, my God, I give you. Ill ill H. .OPE shines as doth a wisp of straw in the stable. Why fearest thou the drunken wasp's wild foolish flight? Wisdom 129 See, the sun powders through the chink a ray of light. And sleepest thou, thine elbow on the table ? Poor soul, this water from deep icy depths unlocked, Drink thou. Then sleep again. Thou seest how I wait, And I will lull the dreams of thy siesta late, Singing a lullaby as to an infant rocked. Noon sounds. Forgive me, Madame, but your de- parture take. He sleeps. Strange, what a sound a woman's footsteps make Resounding in the brain of poor, unhappy men. Noon sounds. I have sprinkled water in the chamber. Go, sleep. Hope shines like pebbles in a somber fen. Ah, when shall bloom again the roses of September? IV Caspar Haiiser sings . a calm orphan, I am come Rich only in my tranquil eyes, Toward men who live in great cities : Nor am I evil born, as some. At twenty years new pain to bear, Under love's flame most dutiful, I found the women beautiful But they did not find me fair. So that, not having land or king, And braver than my love unhealed, I wished to die on war's red field, But death passed by so slight a thing. 130 Paul Verldine Am I too early born, or late? What has the world for me to do ? My pain is deep O, all of you, Pray for poor Gaspard and his fate. V A T GREAT weariness Falls on my life: Sleep, all hope, Sleep, all strife! I see nothing more. I lose the memory Of bad and of good. . . the sad history ! 1 am a cradle A hand may balance In a black cave. . . Silence, silence ! VI HE sky is just beyond the roof So blue, so calm; A tree-top just beyond the roof Rocks its slow palm. The chime in the sky that I see Distantly rings ; A bird on the tree that I see Plaintively sings. Wisdom 131 My God, my God, but life is there, Tranquil and sweet ; This peaceful murmur that I hear Comes from the street! What have you done, you who stand here, In tears and ruth? Say, what have you done, you who are here, With your lost youth? VII I KNOW not why My bitter spirit, With troubled wing and mad flies o'er the sea; Dreams that to me are dear, On frightened pinions fly, My love beats on the billows. Why, O why? Gull, with melancholy flight, My sad thought follows the sea. Balanced when the storm winds flee; Dipping o'er the hollows white. Gull, with melancholy flight. Drunk with the sun And liberty, An instinct guides it onward o'er the deep. The summer breezes free, O'er the crimson waves, each one, Carry it softly in a warm half-sleep. Sad, with what sadness it cries ! The distant pilot, listening, fears. It floats, dives, and disappears, Then with a wounded wing will rise To wheel and then more sadly cries. 132 Paul Verlaine I know not why My bitter spirit With troubled wing so mad flies o'er the sea; Dreams that to me are dear, On frightened pinions fly, My love beats on the billows. Why, O why? T, IX HE sound of a horn sobs toward the wood, An orphan strain that wanders at will, Coming and dying under the hill, Where soft winds sigh in an errant mood. The soul of a wolf weeps in this strain, That mounts to the slowly setting sun; And sorrow and pleasure blend as one In a ravishing tune with a sad refrain. And to heighten this languorous plaint, In long white streaks, like arrows of lint, From a crimson sky falls the silent snow. And the strain has the air of a sigh Of autumn, so soft it seems and low, Across the sleeping landscape sadly spent. X O 'UR bodies how they make my heart expand With languorous pity and compassion deep ! Ah ! Always when in somber depths of sleep, The covers stripe the skin oppress the hand. Peeved at the fevers of returning day; Your body warm with sweat that slowly dries Wisdom 133 A bird, half wakened, trembling ere it flies< And O, your feet, how weary of the way! The breast marked by a heavy striking fist ! The mouth still reddened by the cruel blow I The flesh a frail and quaking piece of show ! The eyes poor lovely eyes that have not missed The sadness of the end they have surmised ! Sad body! O how weak and how chastised! XIII Loi )NG rows of hedges stretch away In fleecy cloud-forms toward the sky, White as the mist slow drifting by. How sweetly smells the growing bay ! Some trees and mills in proper place, That barely touch the tender green; And here the playful colts are seen That swiftly o'er the meadows race. In this vague Sabbath, calm and light, Here are the sheep, also at play; The strong, large sheep in white array, And gentle as their fleece is white. And now comes, bursting from on high, A flood of sound rolled in volutes, From chiming bells that sound like flutes Upon the glowing milk-white sky. 134 Paul Verlaine XV HE sea is fairer Than cathedrals are; A tender nurse That soothes when all things mar. The sea where prays Our virgin queen, Marie 1 She has the gifts So terrible and sweet. She pardons all When cruel billows beat. This vast expanse Is full of kindly ways. How patient, too, When the loud tempest rings. A friendly breath Upon the water sings : All ye who hope In vain, die without pain. Then, 'neath the skies, A vast expanse of sheen. How blue she is! Pink, gray and living green Fairest of all, And better far than we. OF OLD AND RECENTLY (JADIS ET NAGVERE) OF OLD PROLOGUE B EGONE vile troupe ! Damned children, off with you ! These leisures are your due, The Chimera lends her croup. Run, climbing on her back, As swarms a flight of dreams That to a sick man seems Flowers on his curtains black. This moist hand that is mine, Feeble, again, but at last Without fever (that has passed!) Moves with an aid divine. My hands bless you, little cares, Little flies of my black sun And my white nights. Run, Fly quickly, little despairs! Little joys, hopes, sad ways, That only yesterday Left me for other preys. . . Go, agri somniaf PIERROT To Leon Valade. k H, this is not the moon-struck dreamer here, That used to rail his forbears, o'er the door. His joy, quite like his candle, is no more. Today his specter haunts us, thin and clear. [i37l 138 Paul Verlaine And now where flashing lightning takes its flight, His pale blouse has the air as of a shroud; With mouth agape, he seems to shriek aloud Against the gnawing worm that holds him quite. And with the flapping of some bird of night, He makes with sleeves that flutter long and white, The foolish signs none answer from the earth. His eyes are holes that burn with sulphurous flame, And frightful are the powdered cheeks that frame The bloodless face and pointed nose of death. I KALEIDOSCOPE To Germain Nottveau N a street in the heart of a village of dreams, This shall seem as long since, when one lived in the past: For an instant quite vague and yet gripping one fast . . Oh, this sun through the rising mist darting its beams I Oh, this cry on the sea and this voice in the wood ! This shall seem as though all lay afar from one's range; An awakening slowly from cycles of change And with all clearer shown and with all understood In this street in the heart of the magical town, Where the organs at dusk grind the jigs with a sweep, Where cafes shall have cats on the dressers asleep, And the bands of musicians stroll noisily down; Yet so sad will this seem as almost to benumb, With the tears flowing warm that the cheek softly feels, Of Old and Recently 139 With the laughter that sobs in the noise of the wheels Invocations that rise to the deaths yet to come ; With the words very old, like bouquets pale and dead; Where the noise of the public dance rings to arouse ; And the widows with copper bound close to their brows All these peasants that cut through the crowd that is led To stroll there, and who talk with the youthful black- guards, With the old men all marked with a shameful disease, However, not far in the by-path one sees From some public fete rise the bursting petards. And all this, as though dreaming, one wakens to see, And then sleeping again falls to dreaming alway Of the selfsame enchantment, the selfsame display, Summer the grass noise moire of the flight of a bee. INTERIOR ITH large and somber folds an ample tapestry Descending with a sheer and stately emphasis Along the four great walls of a retreat abyss Mysterious of shadows wed with luxury. Old furniture and dazzling stuffs that faded be; An ancient bed, half-seen, and vague as a regret; And over all the seal of age and secret set Some allegory through whose depths one cannot see. No pictures, books, no piano or blossoms light; Only in the deep gloom upon the cushions, dumb, A ghostly woman sitting, clad in blue and white, 140 Paul Verlame Who sadly smiles witness disquieting where join Slow echoes of a song, epithalamium, In an obsession made of musk and of benzoin. ART OF POETRY To Charles Morice V-/HOOSE the music before all things, And for this the Uneven prefer; More vague, more soluble in the air, With nothing that weighs or that clings. Also, one should fail not to choose His words in a contemptuous way. Nothing is more dear than a song gray, Where the Indecisive and the Precise fuse. This, the bright eyes behind the veils. This, the full day trembling at noon. This, the warm autumn sky aswoon, Or when the blue starry host prevails. For we wish but the Nuance to adorn, Not Color, nothing but vagueness and cloud. Oh! The Nuance alone, betrothed, endowed Dream to the dream, flute to the horn I Shun the Epigram, the assassin, The cruel Wit and the Laugh impure ; For the Heavens weep, nor will endure This vile garlic from the kitchen. Take Eloquence and wring its neck, And 'twill strengthen your verse often-time To hold in leash the enterprising Rhyme That runs away and often, without check. Of Old and Recently 141 Oh! who can tell the wrongs of Rhyme? What child or negro was the first to fling The world this bauble, that can only ring Hollow and false beneath the file of Time? Music again music that moves 1 That thy verse be a flying thing, Fleeing from a soul on speeding wing Toward other skies and other loves. And then, that thy verse may endure, O sprinkle it with the morning breeze, Fragrant with thyme under the trees. And all the rest is . . literature. Ti THE CLOWN HE stage, half-shaken by a noisy orchestra, Creaks underneath the clown's big feet with sharp refrain; Whilst he with his good-natured chaff and fine disdain Berates the gaping crowd that throngs the muddy way. His costume, with his forehead chalked and cheeks so gay, Is marvelous. He speaks, then makes a dumb appeal, Receiving from behind the kicks he does not feel. Embraces then his doughty dame and makes his play. With heart and soul they cheer his gross buffoonery. And in his gaudy doublet, twirling all awry, 'Twere better that he stop. His buskins might not hold! But this that one can most admire and most defend, Is this perruque he wears, and on the queue, so bold, The saucy butterfly poised proudly at the end. I4 2 Paul Ferlaine ALLEGORY To Jules F ale don JLxESPOTIC, heavy Summer, with a languid sweep, Like some bored king watching a tortured victim cry, Stretches itself beneath the white and ardent sky And yawns. Far from his work the toiler lies asleep. Weary, the morning lark dumb silence seems to keep. No cloud, no breath of air, naught seems to stir on high To place a wrinkle where smooth depths of azure lie Unmoved, and silence ends in silence vast and deep. Even the grasshoppers have felt the heavy spell. In their straight beds of stones, uneven, in the dell, The little babbling brooks, half dry, have ceased to flow. Incessantly the surge of sultry light thrown back Luminously extends its flux and reflux slow. . . And here and there are flitting wasps, yellow and black. THE INN To Jean Moreas W. HITE walls and roof of red, this is the Inn, be- nign, Set by the dusty road that makes our poor feet bleed. Blue wine, good bread, for passport not the slightest need Gay little inn with "Bonheur" on the swinging sign. Of Old and Recently 143 Here thou canst smoke, and sing, and sleep, for all is thine. The host is an old soldier, and his wife can feed And wash and comb ten scruffy urchins gone to seed, And talk of love and ease and never once repine. The kitchen, with its low black roof where roosts the hen, Its chromos "Maleck Adel" and "The Three Wise Men," Welcomes you with the perfume of good cabbage soup. Do you not hear ? This is the pot that hums a lay With the clock's ticktacking pulse. And, if you stoop, An open window shows the landscape, far away. CIRCUMSPECTION To Gaston Senechal IVE me your hand, breathe softly here, let's find a seat Under this giant tree where light winds die away In broken sighs that flutter 'neath the branches gray, Bathed in the soft caressing moonlight pale and sweet. Sit still, and toward our knees let fall our eyes, dis- creet, And think of nothing only dream. Give them their way, The happiness that flies, and love that will not stay. Our hair, an owl's wing touches in our calm retreat. Let us forget to hope. But wise and self-contained, Our souls should hold the spell and this that has re- mained From the serene death of the sun, so still and deep. 144 Paul Verlame In silence let us dream in this nocturnal charm. It is not well to trouble in his quiet sleep The god of nature, mute, and yet so full of harm. T VERSES TO BE SLANDERED To Charles Vignier. HIS evening leaning o'er your sleeping form, dear one; Your body lying chastily on my humble bed; As one who ponders over something he has read, I gazed, and saw that all is vain beneath the sun ! And ah, that one should live, what marvel, finely done ! We are so like the flowers where fold on fold is spread! O thought bewildering, that nearly turns the head! Sleep, poor one, sleep ! Through fear for you my sleep is gone. Sorrow of loving you, my frail love, breathing low, As one breathes on that fateful day when he must go. Lips dumb and cold life waiting at death's portal. O mouth that laughs in dream upon my mouth, and waits The other more ferocious laugh with which it mates I Oh, wake ! and tell me quick. The soul, is it immortal? Of Old and Recently 145 II LANGUOR To Georges Courteline I AM the Empire in its decadence, where one By one they pass, the great Barbarians white, Composing, in an idle mood, acrostics light, In style of gold where dance the languors of the sun. My lonely soul's heart-sick with weariness alone. Yonder they say is waged the long drawn bloody fight. O weak of will, and full of this corroding blight! Unable to enjoy life's flower no triumphs won To seek calm death, life's final blessing, no desire! All's drunk! Bathyllus, have you quit your laughter gay? Ah, all is drunk, all eaten ! Nothing more to say ! Only a silly poem you scatter in the fire; Only a sullen slave neglected of all men; Only a sad disgust, for reasons past my ken ! T< IV LANDSCAPE OWARD St. Denis an ugly landscape met the eye, However, there one day we strolled, my love and I. We both were angry and quarreled on the way. The level sun of summer burned with its steady ray The plain, all dry and parched, and seeming like a roast. 146 Paul Verlaine 'Twas shortly after we had had the Siege and most Of "country houses" had been leveled to the ground. Others were building up like toy homes, round on round ; And some had cannon balls imbedded in the plaster And thus inscribed : A SOUVENIR OF THE DISASTER. O VI THE POET AND THE MUSE CHAMBER, have you kept their foolish spec- ters grim, Where falls the gloom, and, save the spider, naught is heard? chamber, have you kept those figures vaguely blurred, Traced by the dirty walls and scattered scratches, dim? Fie ! Furnished chamber, that recoils from all of these In this dry play of distance to the visage stirred Of memories of so many fateful things occurred, Do they regret those nights those nights of -Hercules? Interpret as you please, it is not that, I say: You will not guess my meaning, folk of good intent. 1 say to you that all your thoughts are far away. O chamber that takes flight in rays so sadly spent, You only know ! Perhaps it is not past your ken, What marriage nights shall have deflowered our nights, since then! Of Old and Recently 147 VIII A ROGUE To Jean Moreas ITH the eyes of a death's-head, a skull That the moon makes meager and thin, All my past let us say all my remorse From my window mocks me, within. With the voice of an old man failing fast, As one hears at a theater, All my remorse let us say all my past Mumbles a tralala bitter. With the fingers, green, of a corpse on a gibbet, A fool frets a wheezy guitar; Dancing on the future, on exhibit, With an elasticity rare. Old rogue, begone ! I love not this at all, Cease your fool songs and dances gay. He answers thus: "This is less farcical Than you're inclined to think today." But, as to your concern, O sweet Knave, pish ! This much, at least, I'd have you know: I'm mindful but this far, that, if you wish, Why, clear out ! go to Jericho ! 148 Paul Ferlaine IX MADRIGAL Y OU madden me these days of autumn pale and white, Because within your eyes there burns a beastly light. And you have gnawed me, like the princess Mouse, the while, With the fine end of that sharp tooth which is your smile, Maiden august, who makes my sorrow blazon clear, Again, as with the rancid oil of your old tear! Yea, foolish, I will die of that damned look you keep I But go (will you?) the unsuspecting pool's asleep, And from the lilies, fleet one needs acclaim at last, Dead water has drunk up the wind that swept each mast. Throw yourself in, exalt ! to make my grief more drear, Speak thou in tones so low one must be deaf to hear. RECENTLY PROLOGUE HESE are things of the twilight, Visions when the night declines. O Truth, thou giveth them light Even as a dawn that shines So dimly in the shade abhorred, One doubts, each moment, if these be Created by the pale moon, blurred By tossing branches of a tree, Of Old and Recently 149 Or, if these phantoms, dark, morose, Come hither to take shape and soul, Uniting here and circling close In a harmonious whole Of nature and of the sun; Man blessing, God proclaiming high, And offering, one by one, Pure hymns to the sweet blue sky. LOVE (AMOUR) BALLAD ON Two YOUNG ELM TREES M .Y garden was sweet as 'twas fair, Though humble 'twas rich to possess ; Half orchard, with vegetables rare, With some flowers that bloomed, none the less, In colors of happiness. Birds sat on the boughs of each tree; And grass stretched for idleness But dearer my elms were to me. From my dining room, lighted and clear, Where wine often flowed to excess, I saw them salute in the air When touched by the wind in its stress, And bend in a loving caress, Their leaves seemed to flute as in glee; In that close there was joy, I confess But dearer my elms were to me. Alas ! when came time to impair My joy without hope of redress; The orchard and garden did share In the gloom of my bitter distress; And the flowers that bloomed to excess, And the grass that pillowed so free; And the bird that my sorrows impress But dearer my elms were to me. ENVOI O prince, I have known the simpleness, And joy where your hamlets be, With health, and love, and with kindliness But dearer my elms were to me. [i53l 154 Paul Verlame PARSIFAL IT ARSIFAL has vanquished the Damsels, their gentle Babble and amusing luxury, and their bent Toward the Flesh of the virgin boy they would tempt To love their glowing breasts and their gentle babble. He has vanquished the Woman with heart so subtle, Displaying her tempting arms and throat like a lily bent; He has vanquished Hades and returned to his tent With the heavy trophy of burnished metal, With the spear in his arms that pierced the Saviour's side. He has healed the king and now a king, in his pride, He has himself become priest of the Holy Grail. He kneels to adore in garments of golden fire The vase where the Saviour's blood like the morning shines And, O, the voices of children singing in the choir ! EVENING THOUGHT V-rf ROUGHED in the withered grass and cold, an exile, Under the yews, frost white, of that sad isle; Or wandering like the ghostly forms that seem In that wild landscape born as of a dream, Where watch their fabled herds ere taking flight The blue-eyed Barbarians with visage white, The tender Ovid, lonely bard of Love, Sweeps with his glance the sky below above, And contemplates the wide expanse of sea. Love 155 His hair is thin the gray locks blowing free Above a forehead wrinkled, fold on fold; His habit rent, the flesh cut by the cold, Forlorn the haunting smile, eyes dull and worn, His beard, now nearly white, is rudely torn. How all these sorrows witness, in their way, A life complete with sadness and dismay; Excessive love, fierce envy, burning hate, And some slight obligations to the State. Thus Ovid mourns the Rome that once acclaimed Him bard of Love that Rome his muse proclaimed. So Jesus, who obscures this life of mine, Not being Ovid, I at least am Thine ! LUCIEN L&TINOIS III O WOMAN ! Prudent, wise, calm enemy, As yet half conscious of your victory. Killing the wounded, seeking out the spoils, And spreading ruin far with iron and flame. O good uncertain friend, so little sure, Sweet often too sweet like a fire of coals That lulls one in a gentle soothing sleep Where death to soul and body often lurks. Woman, I'm done with you for good take here (However, with a sense of half regret From one that one remorse alone recalls) This insult. But as you can never have Remorse, more than a pine a living shade, This, then, is my definitive farewell. Tree fatal to the refuge of our race, From Eden to this Irritated Day. 156 Paul Verlaine I HAVE a mania for love. My foolish heart is weak. No matter when, no matter what, no matter where. Wherever the light of beauty, or virtue, or valiance shines, There my heart throws itself with furious speed; And, having clasped at last, embraces a hundred times The being or object it pursued with tireless zeal. Then, when the illusion has flown has taken wing, My heart becomes lonely and sad, yet faithful and true ; Leaving to the ingrates something, at least, of itself' Blood or flesh. Then, without further grieving to death, Immediately embarks for the isles of the Chimeras, Carrying naught but the bitter tears it had known, And the frightful despairs of the moment Then re-embarks. I have a mania for love. What shall I do ? Bah, nothing! XVIII 'O you recall in Paradise, dear soul, The station at Auteuil the trains of old That bore you daily, come from La Chapelle? Now all is over I Well do I recall Our meeting places 'neath the sloping stairs Awaiting you unable to forget Your graceful movements coming down the steps. How agile and how slim an angel form On a celestial ladder, floating down. And then your friendly smile, so filial; The cordial clasp of hands your loyalty. Love 157 Your eyes sweet, lively, clear and innocent Whose somber light went straight into my heart And penetrated every shadow there. The welcome o'er, and my old arms in yours We went to stroll beneath the tuneful trees. Ah, how we talked ! Of metaphysics, too. And how you argued little charbonnier With stubborn frankness ready to deny, But quick to pause at the first step of doubt. Then we returned more slowly by the route, Some scholars with me, rather with us both, And dined on little, smoking very soon. And for a long time soothing a vague need. Poor child, your voice, your voice in the Bois ! PARALLELLY (PARALLELEMENT) DEDICATION D O you remember, coquette too mature, Whose blarney many a vulgar flame beguiled, The good old times, when, young and quite cock-sure, You heard me gush in hyperbolic style ? And do you keep a memory of those days, O plump one or the jerseys, poult-de-soi? How I of old in queer fantastic ways, Made court by mail, through gallant postal law? And, Madam Mother, have you quite forgot? No, no, I vow, even in your foolish fetes ; My taste was bad, my grammar it was not, Unlike your own dear letters, silly sheets. And when the hour of marriage rang at last They told me, Ariadne, it was drear. My hungry eyes, my kisses fierce and fast, To your refusals making a dumb ear. Do you recall, if it indeed be well, Within your widowed heart's dull murmuring, This I so apt, terrible, horrible, And you, dear jewel, taking to the thing? And all the row, the circus, and affrays, That in the end upset our sad abode; And have you not and have not I, these days, Seen the last shameful windings of our road? How sad ! and here am I, lamentable Debris on floods of vice a sorry sight; And here are you, a jade detestable, And the thing eats me, till I needs must write. [161] 1 62 Paul Verlaine ALLEGORY k N ancient temple crumbling like a dream On the dim summit of a yellow hill, Like some old throneless king, weeping at will, Is vaguely mirrored on a sluggish stream. With stupid mien and sleepy listless air, A withered Naiad with her drowsy wiles, Plagues with a willow wand a faun that smiles, Like some old gallant rustic sitting there. Stale and insipid theme that saddens me! What bard among the singers can there be Like me? Who moves me, in a sullen rage? What worn out, frayed and dusty tapestry, Trite as the settings of an opera stage, As false, alas, as is my destiny? WO forms watching the swallows in their flight. One pale, with jet black hair; the other blonde And pink their flowing garments of old blond Like vague serpents twining, cloudlike and light. Both languorous as asphodels where bright The sky glows with a full moon, soft and round, Whose rays throb with emotion, deep, profound. Parallelly 1 63 Thus, with arms pressing their bodies supple, Strange couple pitying every other couple, They dream upon the moonlit balcony. Behind them in the room's rich somber shade, Enthroned in stately pomp, as in a play, And full of perfumes, stands the Bed, unmade. VI SAPPHO W ITH hollow eyes and bosoms firm and bold, The maddened Sappho, torn by passions white, Runs like a she-wolf on the beaches cold. She dreams of Phaon, forgetful of the Rite, And, seeing how her tears so illy fare, By handfuls pulls her long and streaming hair. Then she evokes, with grief, silent, yet deep, The days when brightly shown the early fame Of those warm loves extolled in songs of flame, Sent, now, in memory to the maids asleep. With pallid lids on weary eyes, she bends And springs into the waters of La Moire. On the black waves the lights from heaven pour And pale Selene has avenged the Friends. 164 Paul Verlaine HARLOTS I To the Princess Roukine. "Capellos de Angelas" (Frandise espagnol) \^J GLY as though drawn by Boucher, No powder in her flowing hair, She's foully blonde, yet passing fair To us who sin with her each day. And it is mine, I think by right, This golden head so often kissed; This warm cascade so oft embraced, Whose ends light me with rays of light. But she is more to me, I hold, Like some deep flaming circle o'er The entrance of a temple door; Or like the fabled fleece of gold. And who shall sing this beauty's source Save me, her chorister and priest, Her slave, her master, who at least Thus damns himself without remorse. Her body with its harmonies, As soft and white as is a rose; As white as milk and pink as those Pink lilies blown 'neath purple skies. Thighs beautiful, breasts firm and tense; The back, the loins, the stomach, feast For the eyes and the hands in quest, And for the mouth and every sense. Parallelly 165 Mignon, let us see if thy bed Has always 'neath the curtain's glow The bewitched pillow, bulging so, And the mad sheets ! O toward thy bed ! B Ill CASTA PIANA LUE hair with strands like rusty wheat, Cold eyes and hard that are too sweet, Beauty like a warm summer noon; Breasts finely arched whose odors scent Your cruel form magnificent; Your pallors stolen from the moon, These charms o'erwhelm us with their guile, Notre Dame of the garrets vile In which we venerate your power With unblessed candles, Aves sung For which no Angelus was rung, Yet tolled so many a sinful hour. You smell of brimstone and of fire. Men turn to fools at your desire. To craven weaklings, vague and fleet, In less time than to act or say, To pass a dazzled time of day, Or kiss the slippers on your feet. Your garret is a fearful place ! Within it every day you face The job of beating scoundrels there; Of chasing rogues on pleasure bent, Furnished the sacred sacrament. For you, how little do they care ! 1 66 Paul Verlaine You're right, my girl! So love me, then, Better than young or aged men Unskillful in the loving art. For I I know your manner best; I know each movement, each behest; And pledge you an indulgent heart. Nay, nay, but put that frown to rout, Casta, and drive away that pout; And let me sip those sweets of thine Piana, sugar, salt, and spice Sweets that my thirsty lips entice And let me drink thy balms divine. REFERENCES II FALSE IMPRESSION D AME mouse scampers, Black in the gray of eve. Dame mouse scampers, Gray in the dark. They sound the bell. All the good prisoners sleep. They sound the bell, You, too, should sleep. Not the bad dream. No thought but of your loves. Not the bad dream; The good always! The wide moonlight! They snore close by your side. The wide moonlight In reality! Parallelly 167 A cloud passes, It grows dark as an oven, A cloud passes : Hold, the dawn of day I Dame mouse scampers ! Pink in the rays so blue. Dame mouse scampers: Get up, you lazy ! Ill OTHERS HE jail-yard blossoms with care, Like the forehead Of each one there Who goes, with faltering step and thigh all Shrunken quite, Along the wall Foolish with light. Turn, Samsons without Delilah, Without Philistine, Turn well the Mill the Fates predestine; And, railing not the law, apart, Crush at each move Your faith, your heart And your love. They pass ! and their poor shoes Make a dry sound; With pipe at nose Humbly they go round. 1 68 Paul Verlaine A word the dungeon is their lot ! Not a sigh. It is so hot They think to die. And I I go in measured strides With that sad band. Prepared, besides, Nothing to withstand. And if I, too, shall contrite be, Thy stubborn vow, Society Did you choose me? Brothers mine, good old robbers, Sweet vagabonds, Full blown sharpers, My heart responds! Smoke on philosophically, Promenade you, Peacefully. 'Tis sweet to nothing do. IV REVERSIBLES Totus in maligno positus. o HEAR the cats that make A long, shrill cry, Swift calls that come to wake, Then slowly die. Ah, where this sad scene blends, The Alreadys are the Agains! Parallelly 169 O the vague Angelus! (Whence comes its toll?) See light the Salutaris In the depth of a hole. Ah, in these mournful ways, The Nevers are the Always ! What wild dreams fleet, You wide white walls, That the sobs repeat With doleful calls ! Ah, in this place that severs, The Always are the Nevers. Sweetly you die, apart, In obscurity, Unwatched, O loving heart, Without futurity! Ah, in grief that naught allays, The Agains are the Alreadys ! M ,Y room looks closely on a railroad shed where trains Rumble all night (my nights are white) with noisy strains. Here are the engines fired and here the trains made up ; And truly 'tis a noise like that when birds wake up, Thrown on the skies of bronze, and glass, and oil, and grease. Such warblings one could hardly guess they never cease. 170 Paul Verlame One might well say 'twas like awaking birds that try An early flight against the violet tinted sky, And with the daylight scarcely yet begun to dawn. O these trains that speed like torrents, thundering on ! VI IMPROBABLE, BUT TRUE .L /A! I am in the Index, and in the dedications Here I am Paul V. ... pure and simple. The audacity Of my friends (for publishers are of the saints) Is great, and they should ban me from their catalogues. Extraordinary and saponaceous thunder Of an excommunication that I venerate To the point of making any quantity of faults ! However, if I were not (forcibly) prevented, I would love, seeing how contrary I am, This modesty, so rare, in all the world of books. VII THE LAST TEN B ELGIUM, that gave to me this leisure without ease, Thanks ! Here at least I can reflect and seize In the silence of these cells, calm and white, The reasons, that, like insects, take their flight Above the boastful reeds of a vain world ; Reasons of my eternal self, divine; And I can ticket all (so dearly bought) In the fine crystal cases of my thought. But, O Belgium, this stubborn prison door, Open at last enough, why punish more? Brussels, Aug., 1873. Mons, Jan., 1875. Parallelly 171 MOONS I WISH, that I may kill you, O time that lays me waste, To live again the days when my heart's love was chaste. To lull my luxury and shame to the sweet notes Of kisses on Her hand, and not upon Their throats. The vile Tiberias I am to-day, may keep Me hour by hour, and though I laugh or though I weep, Ah, may he sleep ! to dream far from a cruel joy Of those pale budding maids, honored without alloy In moonlit fetes, after the green sward dance so light, When from the steeple strikes the middle hour of night. II AFTER THE MANNER OF PAUL VERLAINE T, HE moon's to blame for what is done When I assume the mask nocturne ; And Saturn who inclines her urn, And her pale moons, one after one. Romances without words ! How rare The charm of their expressed discord! False and insipid word for word, And yet what sound and thrill is there ! 'Tis not through lack of pardonings For those who wound your sense of truth; Myself I pardon, 'tis my youth Embellishing some foolish things. 172 Paul Verlaine And I absolve these lies from harm, 'Tis they that bring a banal joy, Since these sad leisures I employ Inoculate me with their charm. Ill EXPLANATION Je vous dis que ce n'est pas ce que I' on pensa. P.V. T J. HE happiness to bleed upon a true friend's heart, The need to weep upon his breast these tears of mine, The sweet desire to speak to him, low and apart, The dream to be with him alone, without design. The grief at having such good enemies, in swarms. The deep disgust at being an obscene machine. The horror of mad cries, impure, from demon forms. The nightmare of a never ending stormy scene. To give one's life to God or to one's native land. Or to the other, whom you love kissing the hand That ne'er betrayed kissing the mouth that never lies. To live far from all tasks, from saintly torments fly For the clear breasts of women with the shining eye And for the . . . rest! toward what deaths full of infamies ! THE LAST FETE GALLANT O NCE for all, separate let us be fleet, Dear gentlemen, and you, most dear mesdames. Enough of marriage songs with loud acclaims, And then, besides, our joys were cloying sweet. Parallelly 173 No remorse, no sighs let's break the spell. 'Tis frightful we had ever felt such deep Affection for those poor deluded sheep, Beribboned with the worst of doggerel. ? A trifle foolish, also, in our flight, With our grand airs of barely touching earth. The god of love wills we should have no dearth Of breath. He is a young god also right. Let's part, I say, and without sorrow. But O, that hearts once pure and gaily beating, Today should be so noisily entreating That we set sail for Sodom and Gomorrah ! POEM SATURNINE I T was bizarre and Satan ought to laugh. This summer day had made me drunk and rude. What foolish singer this, with all her chaff, And the disgusting things that she has spewed ! And this piano set in too much smoke, Beneath the swinging lamp with red flame, blurred; It seemed my ever growing anger spoke It seemed as though to mock my very word. I think my senses being all awry My bile seethed like fermenting wine in casks. Oh ! The cafe concerts and refrains that fly, Made false by heavy plaster of the masks. In this vile hamlet where I wandered late, Sucking with relish some refreshing ice, Three rowdies with their eyes degenerate Ogled continually at my grimace. 174 Paul Ferlaine That I was hooted at was very plain By those young toughs near where one takes the car; And the abuse I threw them, though in vain, Was such I nearly choked on my cigar. Now I return: I hear a voice the light Step of a ghost. Someone, or no one near? Yet, surely someone passed. Ah, what a night ! The hour of droll awakening soundeth clear. Attigny (Ardennes). May 31, July i, 1885. THE IMPUDENT T JL HE evil eye and miseries wide, Said with no thought to slander, Have given to this fiend of pride The soul of an old prisoner. Yes, jettatore, sad wanderer, The first and last of them that sigh, You dwell in the black shadows where Men will pursue you till you die. The children ripen at your look. Refusals many must you brook. Since, impudent, your ways annoy. Beauties that pass, your smiling elves, Throw not your coins to this bad boy, But give, instead of alms yourselves. Parallelly 175 THE IMPENITENT O 'LD rover worn and weary eyed, With hellish lust unsatisfied, Whose faded orbs grow clear and bright When some fair woman passes by And, like a window, throws a light. Your senses waken, subtle, high; Stamen and pistil, too, reply; She is all flower, all fruit, all food. And from your mouth your tongue extends To lick your lips so hungry-rude. Old fractious faun that rears and bends, Are you not done ? what further ends Can serve your lust the filthy host? Old fool, have you not had your due, And is it nothing, this you boast? In spite of dainties lost to view, Your heart grown icy through and through; Gnawing, as though a luxury, Your heart, your loins, your very spleen Your vitals wheresoe'er they be. Sugared and sweet, of honeyed mien, Damning like fire from heaven seen; Powder-black, or blue as a flower, Your passioned gaze seeks every eye, And this in spite of heaven's Power. The noses please you that pass by, Gracious or saucy ones awry; On women, as on men, they place The indications that they bear, And give the force to every face. 176 Paul Verlaine Long kisses clear as songs are clear, Astringent kisses small and dear That seem to suck the souls they frame. The good, fat kisses of a child, And dancing kisses, like a flame. Kisses hungry, and kisses wild, Kisses drunken, for mouths defiled, Kisses languid and ferocious: These the best loved, notwithstanding, Are they not? fair mouths atrocious ! Bodies, too, your taste demanding, Better in repose than standing; Their charms displaying as they march, Of no importance where they stroll, Bridge Holy Spirit or the Arch. But this that you demand of all, Large, small, of aspect bright or dull, Is this : they must at least be young With fine strong feet and arms as light As muscular, and tresses hung Like this : long, curly, or cut quite Short otherwise perverse. In spite Of which, at least, there needs must be Some saving touch of innocence Some show, at least, of decency. Nay, nay, be witness and defence, Ye gods who know her fire intense; That all her manner, all her art, Can sound the depth where pleasures flow, With useless trifles put apart. And it is thus that morals go, And meet that scoffers have some show. Parallelly 177 But you, you laugh to see it all, As some one, being more than pressed, Passes beyond forbidden wall. And, somewhat weary and distressed, At being forced to thus protest, You raise a drink-degraded voice But not a ninny's voice and say : "What matter? Comrade, we've no choice If we be creatures of such clay!" BALLAD OF THE LIFE IN RED T O one who sees the rosy way, Youth unsatisfied as yet, Or second childhood not less gay, No vows or superfluous regret; Ignoring all that the times beget The sage sits dull where joys hold sway Instinctively like a phallus set. But I see life in its red array. The wise one reasons and notes alway The changing modes that the day beset; Scanning all things and seeking to weigh Life in his rough hands hard as jet; Time and more it were need to get One like this from his nook to stray; The world is gray by this recluse met. But I see life in its red array. He, this other, about him may Throw his regards, well meant, but let Only his eye for a moment stay, And the world is a thing of vain regret 178 Paul Verlame To the puffed eye of philanthropy; All seems black to him, maid or grisette, Men, or wine, or books of the day. But I see life in its red array. ENVOI Prince or princesses go, I pray, In triumph down the road where I Plod in the ruts of the roadside clay. But I see life in its red array. T HANDS __ HESE are not the hands of a churchman, Some elegant prelate less saintly than fine; And yet they seem to wear the same distinction Imprinted here succinctly line on line. And these are not the hands of an artist, Some lonely poet, let us say, obscure ; But something as sad perhaps the saddest, Resembling a group in miniature. These hands have their character and souls, They are a world in movement, so it seems; The thumb and little finger are the poles Between which flow the strange magnetic streams. The meteors that shoot across the brain, Quite like those tempests that o'errun the heart, Are here repeated with a logic plain, And mirrored with a consummating art. Nor is there here the worthy rural palm, Of those who dwell beyond the cities' show; Theirs are the deep drawn lines, how calm ! That seem to say: "Toil, that ye nothing owe." Parallelly 179 They are meager; they are long; they are gray The knuckles are quite large ; the nails are square Like hands the windows of a church display Where saints beneath the golden branches fare. r bliw tjflj ^oTi&fS son fe lB I Or like some old decrepit soldiers', met In after years with all their struggles o'er; Recalling their long battles, fields blood-wet, In summer twilight by some tavern door. They have tonight, these hands so strangely dry, Beneath the scanty hair the years have wrought, A rougher aspect to the touch and eye, As though in prey to some sad afterthought. The cruel care that holds them in embrace, Their bitter half-dream seems as though to mar, And wrings from them a sinister grimace In their peculiar way, hands that they are. .Lff 1-3W ?i!*j:XLf; 5vS rfj.vV I fear to see them lying, still as time, Here on my table, underneath my eyes, As though premeditating some black crime Some mad, some furious deed of monstrous guise. The right hand at my right left at my left I am alone, sitting with forehead bowed; While slowly in my chamber, so bereft, The linen takes the aspect of a shroud. Unceasing howls the wind. With one last gleam The twilight dies across my window shutter. These hands! If they should be some ghastly dream! So much the better then or worse or better ! 180 Paul Verlaine PIERROT GAMIN T J. HIS is not Pierrot, the wild, Any more than Pierrot, the child. This is Pierrot, Pierrot, Pierrot. Pierrot gamin, Pierrot gay, Fresh as a green nut, fresh as May, This is Pierrot, Pierrot, Pierrot ! In stature scarce a meter tall, No task to fetter, like a doll, In his eyes the flash of steel Suited to the cunning deil. To his malice infinite Grimacer, yet poet quite. Lips red as a wound is red, With evil luxuries well fed. Face pale, mouth mocking fine; Long, accentuated in each line The tell-tale thought that clings And contemplates all things. Body slender and yet not thin. Voice not shrill (to a girl's akin). Adolescence that tarries late. Voice to command, body en fete. Charming creature ready quite To satisfy each appetite. Go, brother, comrade, go ! Play the devil high and low. Take of Paris every toll. Roam the world and be the soul, Noble, high, with vile intent, Of our spirits innocent. Parallelly 1 8 1 Grow, for such the way of life. Increase your bitterness with strife. Exaggerate your gaiety Character aureole to satiety. The grimace is the symbol Of our simplicity ! CAPRICE O POET, falsely rich and poor, true man, To the exterior rich and poor, such is the plan. ( Concerning gold, how can one truly know your heart ?) Turn by turn you're facile, droll, and sumptuous. From hopeful "green" to a sad black compunctious. Your garb is always slack in some essential part. A button fails. A thread's awry. Whence come These spots ah, these 1 sadly come or welcome? That laugh and weep upon the stuff one wears. Tie knotted well or ill; shoes bright or terne. Briefly, a type to hang out at the Vieille-Lanterne, Or gaily wander underneath the stars. Pshaw ! A tramp ? but hardly that true man, the only true. A poet ! Yet, if your language is not true You are, at least; and as for language! well, 'tis bad For those who love you not, for fools who hold aloof; The moon will warm the one who has no roof, And death will lull the hearts forever sad. Poor hearts that fall so low, too proud and good; The irony your lips have understood. With all your wounds, hearts wounded day by day, Little sacred hearts of Jesus most lamentable ! Go, poet, go, and seek, if possible, To keep from starving if indeed you may. HAPPINESS (BONHEUR) VI OO very old already, Dreams and memories glad, Sweet magic of the future, Alas, how drear and sad: A girl, almost a child, Lisping a little, too; That you surprised in dreaming, Loving her dressed in blue. Her hands you kissed so often, Her mouth and shining hair; This was the age triumphant, Without design or care. Then came the sad estrangement With bitter words and breath; For one this was the passing, And for the other death. O wake for her, sweet Saviour, When her last hour shall be, So that her soul, my sister, Shall live eternally. X F ANTASTIC "chance" that wrecked me, without sense or rhyme, Has made of me a lodger for a certain time And this the last, I think here in the hospital. This truth that dawns on me is very brutal, [x85l 1 86 Paul Ferlaine Explainable, however, by a robbery sad (Of which the history, 'tis said, is truly bad.) That I've the rheumatism is a mere detail, And, though I have to shelter here, why should I rail. I'm here live here. Some say I "vegetate." So be! They are deceived. Through life's strict ways I come to see Some needful bread, not too much wine, a better bed. I expiate some ancient sin, 'twere better said. (Very ancient?) My blood oft felt this sudden heat! And, relatively speaking, penance is so sweet In martyrology and things armorial Of poets perhaps it is proverbial ! Like any place, here one may rest in peaceful mood, Be a good child of prison a benign Latude, Not counting some poor simple rhymer, so to speak, Who faces death from starving, being all too weak In these sad times when life is rough, hard and unkind. To die to die ! O loving Muse to me inclined, To die in this sad place is better far I hold Unless, that here one is a "layman" and the old Abuses are reformed the "citizen" made free And strong. In fact, he must, else the stability Of Government be lost, with this, that most alarms, Since he is not on horseback on a coat of arms. To die, then, in the sheltering arms Municipal, A thought that at its best is hardly cheerful. Yet, haunted by this thought, I own my shameful role, 'Tis well, they ought to treat me like a blatant fool. The conversation in this modest resting place Is not so difficult or void of social grace. These good folk that the Journal renders quite inane, Conserve, in spite of all attacks and fierce disdain That the Instruction hurls at each hard stubborn head, Some knowledge of the times and what is being said. Happiness 187 The Revolution that 'tis always well to cite And also to condemn, has not extinguished quite Their lively spirits, that are none the less sincere ; And I prefer them to the numbskulls of my sphere, Truly ! and I can stand the shock and let things be Their vice and virtue are indifferent to me. Lacking only Christian hope this is a convent. I need for nothing here in fact I'm well content. And here would I remain, my faith ! All of my life ; And without jealousy, I hope, and without strife, If, when I'm cured, indeed, if such I am, it be That God has not some other labor set for me. Y. XXV To Monsieur Barely. OU ask of me some verses on "Amour," My book of sad emotions and distress, Far distant now in my strange Songs, that press And fall, a flood more bitter every hour. What say, unless "Poor Yorick!" better, "Poor Lelian!" poor soul, so full of feebleness, Grown soft by time, caress, and laziness; Or, taken with a sudden stroke to war On all his past, so pure, without a stain; Well ordered by calm thought of good intent; To damn them all, those hours with God well spent. Then it returns, my Work, worn by the strain, And kneels in penance, asking to be blessed. . . . Pray with and for the bard the Poor Lelian. 1 88 Paul Verlaine XXXI I MMEDIATELY after the sumptuous Salutaris, With all the lights put out, save a few flickering candles, The psalms for the dead are sung in minor tones By the clerks and by the people, seized with melancholy. With solemn knell the bells of the cathedral Are answered from the towers of all the diocese, Hovering and weeping o'er the towns and the country, In the night, so early come, of the long delayed autumn. Each goes to rest, led by the doleful voices So infinitely sweet of the memorial bronze, That lulls the sleep, a little sad, of those yet living, With memories of the dead of all the parishes. SONGS FOR HER (CHANSONS POUR ELLE) FANTASTIC? II V^OMPANION, savory and good, To whom I have bestowed the care Of my old days, e'en as I should; Who is my last sole witness here ; Come, my beloved, that I may kiss, Embrace you long, to take your breath. My heart near yours beats full of bliss With that strong love that lasts till death. So love me true, For without you, I nothing am, And nothing can ! Poor as a church mouse, I, and yet You had ten fingers, and no more ; Our table was too often set In basement or in garret poor; Yet never failed our bed to ring With joyous sounds in lieu of wealth; And it was I was always king Of all your gaiety and health ! So love me true, For without you, I nothing am, And nothing can ! After our nights of love, robust, I come forth strengthened and relieved; For your caress is rich and just, And this, my flesh, is not deceived. Your love makes valiant every part Of my poor being like a wine ; 192 Paul Verlaine Alone, you only have the art, To puft me up a heart divine. So love me true, For without you, I nothing am, And nothing can 1 Of what import your past, my belle, Of what import, parbleu! my own; For I shall always love you well, And you shall love but me alone. In our two miseries let's unite The pardon that the world withholds. So let's embrace, O hold me tight ! And fie upon the world that scolds. So love me true, For without you, I nothing am, And nothing can ! XIII B BRUNETTE, or blonde? Black, or like the skies, Your eyes? I do not know, and yet I love their depths profound, And I adore your hair, that in disorder flies. Mild, or severe? Wise, or with a mocking art, Your heart? I do not know, and yet give thanks to nature dear, That made your heart my master vanquished every part. Songs for Her 193 Faithful, untrue? Of no import it shall be To me, If, always well disposed to give my love its due, Your beauty serve the pledge of my desire for you. Y. XX OU trust the signs of the coffee grounds, Believe in omens and games of surprise But I I only believe in your eyes. Your faith in fairy tales has no bounds; You believe in days that are lucky, and dreams But I I believe in your lies, so it seems. You believe in some vague Being, too; In some special saint that works as a charm, And in all the Aves, that keep you from harm. I only believe in the hours blue And pink on which you shed delights In the voluptuousness of my white nights. And so firm is my faith in its view Toward all these things I hold to be true, That I see nothing else in this world but you. I XXIII 'VE had no luck with womankind, And, since I've grown to man's estate, It always seems to be my fate To pick the worst that one can find. 194 P au l Verlaine I'm schooled in things that bring a curse. Revolting, also, in a way, As bad as any man today Perhaps, by chance, I'm even worse. My women have been light, 'tis clear. That you are not a saint is plain. This frank avowal gives me pain, Said thus between us, O my dear! 'Tis true I once was quite a rake. And true, perhaps, that I am yet. Dishonored thus, can I forget? My thirst for horrors naught can slake. Bah, let us never cease to be Warm lovers, Mignon, for we can You a good girl I, virtuous man Since I love you and you love me ! O XXV NCE I was mystic, but it could not last. (For Woman binds me with a strand of hair.) And yet I have respect for what is past, For the ideal that I now forswear. Yes, Woman binds me with a silken hair! In youth I sent my daily prayer to God. (Today 'tis you who have me on my knees.) And I was full of faith and of white hope, Of charity whose pure fire kissed the breeze. Today 'tis you who have me on my knees ! Songs for Her 195 Woman, the Master, rules through you today. Rules with a force that makes the strongest bend. But O, the treacherous, who still must sway, And feign all things simply to gain her end. To mystic days long gone this lay I send! ODES IN HER HONOR (ODES EN SON HONNEUR) VV HEN peacefully I talk with you This is truly charming Then peacefully You talk with me. When I dispute And foolishly reproach you, Then you dispute Ah, this is droll 1 And sharply you reproach me. If it happens I deceive you, misery, You run the town, And gaily you deceive me. If I am true For any length of time, You stay with me, Remaining true For just that length of time. If happy 1 should chance to be, You are twice as happy, And I am glad To see you also happy. Do I weep, You weep with me. Am I in need, 2OO Paul Verlaine How gaily You hasten to my side. Am I faint You too are faint, And I am more In seeing you So fainting. Ah, when I die Will you die, too? "As I love you The most I, too, Will surely die." . . . And I awake From all these musings. Alas! Was this a dream? (A dream, or what?) These musings. T, XIX HEY tell me, Sweet, you are untrue, What matter, should I be dismayed? You could not break, dear one not you An oath that you had never made. They tell me that you are unkind Toward me I who sometimes am rude. Unkind? Far better, could they find A tune more suited to your mood. Unkind? And yet you always offer, Dear one, a sweet, amusing smile ; My queen, from whose resplendent coffer I draw rich treasures, worth the while. Odes in Her Honor 201 They say, and they think well to say, They say you do not love me, dear. Why care I have your smile each day, And I am happy when you're near. You love me not, and yet the grace And the whole force of pride and duty, You give to me, O fair of face, O you voluptuous beauty ! You love me not? O well, if true, It little matters, does it not? "If you don't love me, I love you" But say, you love me, do you not? BIBLIOGRAPHY Cazals, F. A. et Gustave Le Rouge. LES DERNIERS JOURS DE PAUL VERLAINE. Paris. Mercure de France. 1911. Turquet-M lines. THE INFLUENCE OF BAUDELAIRE. London. Constable & Co. 1903. Lepelletier, Edm. PAUL VERLAINE. SA VIE. SON OEUVRE. Paris. Societe du Mercure de France. 1907. Donos, Ch. (Ch. de Martrin) VERLAINE INTIME. Paris. Vanier. 1898. Huysmans, Joris Karl. A REBOURS. Paris. Char- pentier. 1884. Huret, J. ENQUETE SUR L'EVOLUTION LITTERAIRE. Paris. Charpentier. 1891. De Gourmont, R. LE LIVRE DES MASQUES. Paris. Societe du Mercure de France. 1896. Symons, Arthur. THE SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT IN LITERATURE. London. Heinemann. 1899. Lombroso, Cesare. THE MAN OF GENIUS. Lon- don. Scott. 1891. Lemaitre, Jules. LES CONTEMPORAINS. (Vol. IV) Paris. Societe Franchise D'Imprimerie et de Librairie. 1897. Moore, Geo. CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN. London. Swan, Sonnenchein, Lowery. 1888. Moore, Geo. IMPRESSIONS AND OPINIONS. Lon- don. Nutt. 1891. Eccles, Francis Yvon. A CENTURY OF FRENCH POETS. London. Constable & Co. 1909. Harris, Frank. CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. New York. Kennerley. 1915. [203] 2O4 Paul Ferlaine Thompson, Vance. FRENCH PORTRAITS. Boston. Badger. 1900. Nordau, Max. DEGENERATION. New York. Ap- pleton. !8o5. Doumic, Rene. HOMMES ET IDEES DU XIX SIECLE. Paris. Perrin, 1903. Delille, Edw. SOME FRENCH WRITERS. London. Chapman & Hall. 1893. Gosse, Edm. FRENCH PROFILES. London. Heine- mann, 1905. Verlaine, Paul. CEuvRES COMPLETES. Paris. Va- nier. 5 volumes, 1899-90. Tournoux, Georges A. BIBLIOGRAPHIE VERLAINI- ENNE. Leipzic. Rowohlt. 1912. NOTES NOTES Page 43. To Eugene Carrier e. The source of this poem is to be found in Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai, in the poem entitled: "Epigraphe pour un livre condemne," according to Ernest Dupy, in his Poetes et Critiques. Page 46. Vow. In the original the first line of this poem begins, Ah ! les oarystis. . . . There is no exact equivalent for the word oarystis in English. It is Greek in origin and obsolete in French. Page 48. My Familiar Dream. The original reads as fol- lows in the eleventh line: "Comme ceux des aimes que la Vie exila." Francis Yvon Eccles says: "Que la Vie exila, is ob- scure. Were the beloved banished by this life from their home in heaven? Or were they simply severed by its vicissitudes from their ideal loves? Perhaps this is only an instance in which the poet has said more than he means, and seems to mean more than he has said." Page 49. Parisian Sketch. This poem is written of at length by Lemaitre in Vol. IV, Les Contemporains, and held up to ridicule, as are several others, notably Twilight of Mystic Eve and To Clymene. Page 50. Effects of Night. This curious and picturesque study reminds one of Aloysius Bertrand and his fantastic silhou- ettes in Caspar of the Night. Beaudelaire was never more effective in Fleurs du Mai. It is interesting to note a change in the text from "deux cent vingtcinq pertuisaniers" in Choix de Poesies to "un gros de hauts pertuisaniers" in the Oeuvres Completes. [207] 2o8 Paul Ferlaine Page 55. Valpurgis Night, Classic. The line "This is rather the sabbat of the second Faust, than the other;" refers to the second part of Goethe's Faust. Page 60. Song of the Ingenues. "The Caussades and the Richelieux, And the Knights Faublas all pass," The Caussades and the Richelieux were gallant partisans, and Knights Faublas were those who were (temperamentally, at least) like the Chevalier Faublas in Louvet de Coubray's romance, Amours du Chevalier Faublas, an eighteenth century narrative of frivolous life. Page 64. A Dahlia. This poem seemed to have pleased Sainte-Beuve, who mentioned the fact in a letter to Verlaine in 1866. Woman and Cat and Song of the Ingenues were likewise praised by Banville, according to Donos, in his Ver- laine Intime. Page 65. Nevermore. Lepelletier writes of this poem as follows: "Doubtless he (Verlaine) had forewarnings of the future, but when in 1865 he wrote: 'Happiness has walked side by side with me,' the lines charged with dispair applied to no actual fact in his life; as yet he has experienced no real troubles." Page 67. Marco. A footnote accompanying this poem in the first edition of Poemes Saturniens reads: "The author acknowledges that the rhythm and style of this refrain are borrowed from a poem in the collection of M. J-T de Saint- Germain: Les Roses de Noel (Mignon)." Page 71. Pantomime. Pierrot, Clitander, Columbine, Harlequin how immortal these creatures of fancy! Born in the South, when the world was younger and more joyous, they pirouette through Italian comedy; do the bidding of Moliere and Shakespeare; dance in the canvases of the XIII century; and the age of cement and steel has not wholly extinguished their joyous laughter and merry quips. Notes 209 Page 78. Fantastics. This poem was originally printed in the first edition of Jadis et Naguere. As it obviously belongs to the Fetes Galantes, it is incorporated in this work in later editions. Scaramouche is a buffoon, born in Italian comedy. His chief role is that of receiving kicks and cuffs. Pulcenelli is a type essentially Italian and often confounded with the French Polichinelle. Page 83. Indolents. Ernest Dupuy writes: "This poem . . . is one of the most curious in the collection and ar- ranged in the style employed by Verlaine at this time. The little piece is truly pretty . . . Verlaine has trans- posed ... a half-dozen verses that Shakespeare (in Troilus and Cressida) has put in the mouth of Pandarus of Troy." Page 86. Colloquy Sentimental. Dupy writes of this poem : "This dialogue, so compact, with the questions and answers interlaced like two rapiers, cold, rigid and brilliant, is a sum- mary of the bitter reflections of Lysander. To the tender fears of Hermia, the melancholy lover adds, by way of emphasis, the couplets formed of somber presentiments." Page 96. VIII. A Saint in her bright halo, . . . This is a poem in the style of the Fetes Galantes which the poet, inspired by a genuine passion, has fashioned into a Bonne Chanson. Page 107. Romances Without Words. This curious title of Verlaine's third book of poems seems to have been suggested by Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words. Page 109. I. This is the langorous ecstasy, . . . Tol- stoy in his essay, What is Art, quotes this poem entire as an example of what he calls Verlaine's affected and unintelligible style, asking what it all means particularly the expression, "cri doux que 1'herbe agitee expire." Page 109. II. / vaguely guess, across a murmur drawn . . . This poem, nearly meaningless in the original, and 2io Paul Ferlaine entirely so in the translation, is inserted as an example of Verlaine at his worst. A poem evidently dictated by the Green Fairy. Page in. VI. Behold the dog of Jean Nivelle . . . In French folk lore the dog of Jean de Nivelle was always running away when most wanted. Unlike Jean's dog the Mere Michel's cat was always coming back to the sorrow of Pere Lustucru. The old French song concerning this famous cat begins as follows: "C'est la mere Michel qui a perdu son chat, Qui cri' par la fenetr qui est-c' qui lui rendra, Et 1' comper' Lustucru qui lui a respondu: "Allez, la mer' Michel, votre chat n'est pas perdu." The poem is more or less meaningless to one unacquainted with French nursery rhymes. Page 115. Charleroi. Kobolds are fabulous spirits of the mines. Charleroi, being a mining town in Belgium, the refer- ence is obvious. Page 119. M alines. There are two renderings of the fifteenth line of this poem in the original French. In Choix de Poesies the line reads: "Sous vos yeux a peine irises!" In Ouevres Completes the word "y eux " is substituted for that of "cieux." Page 126. X. No! 'Twos Gallidan Jansenist . . . The last line of this poem is as follows: Sur tes ailes de pierre, 6 folle Cathedrale! The meaning of the adjective "folle" in this connection is exceedingly obscure. Why foolish Cathedral? There is also the French word "folle," meaning a net with large meshes. Page 128. III. Hope shines as doth a wisp of straw. . . . For a ludicrous analysis of this curiously mystical poem the reader is referred to Lemaitre, Contemporains, Vol. IV. Notes 211 Page 130. VI. The sky is just beyond the roof, . . . Of this beautiful poem, composed in prison, Verlaine writes in his book Mes Prisons: "Above the wall before my window (I had a window . . .) I could see the topmost boughs of a tall poplar, swaying and trembling voluptuously in the air. At the same time there reached my ear from distant Brussels . . . the soft, murmuring sounds of a far off fete. And thereupon I made these verses, found in Sagesse." Page 137. Of Old (Prologue). Evidently written in some hospital. White nights are sleepless nights. Page 138. Kaleidoscope. An unintelligible jumble of words a kaleidoscope, as the title implies. Written in Belgium during the poet's vagabond days with Arthur Rimbaud. The line "And the women with copper bound close to their brows," refers to the use of a metal helmet, or casque, worn by women laborers in that country. Lepelletier says the poem was meant as a humorous composition. Lemaitre calls it the work of a madman or a fool. Page 1 66. False Impression. Written in the prison of the Petits-Carmes, Brussels, July, 1873. Page 167. Others. Written in the prison of Petits-Carmes, Brussels, upon wrapping paper purloined from the cantine. The "others" were prisoners like himself with whom, once each morning, Verlaine was allowed to promenade in a small paved court, under the eye of a guard. Page 1 68. Reversibles. As its title indicates, this poem may be read backward as well as in the regular order the meaning (if any) is as clear one way as the other. The third and fourth lines in the second stanza refer to an arrangement of the chapel in the prison at Mons the altar having been placed in a peculiarly shaped alcove. See Verlaine's Mes Prisons. Page 172. Explanation. Poem referring to Arthur Rim- baud. 212 Paul Ferlaine Page 175. The Impenitent. The last line in this poem is as follows: Si nous sommes cet amiteux. The word "amiteux" is argot. There is no equivalent in English. 32720