CLAIR DE LUNE. Photogravure from a painting by Douzette, The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone, That makes to dream the birds upon the tree, And in their polished basins of white stone The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy."-Verlaine. 1884), Memoires d'un Veuf' (Memories of a Widower: 1892), 'Mes Hôpitaux (My Hospitals: 1892), Mes Prisons' (1893), Confessions' (1895), Quinze Jours en Hollande' (A Fortnight in Holland: 1895), twenty-six biographies in Les Hommes d'Aujourd'hui' (The Men of To-day). All Paul Verlaine died the 8th of January, 1896. His end was without suffering. Death was gentler than life had been to him. the poets, and the poets only, accompanied his coffin to the church and to the cemetery. He received no official honors. And the noble simplicity of this funeral was a touching spectacle, well befitting 'poor Lélian.» Before his tomb, the poet François Coppée thus began his address of farewell to the dead: "Let us bow over the bier of a child; let us respectfully salute the tomb of a true poet." A child in his life, a true poet in his work: such indeed was Paul Verlaine. Like a child, he had a tender heart, a candid and changeable spirit, a weak and capricious character. According to chance, sometimes evil carried him away, and sometimes good. One might almost say that good and evil sprang up within him in a kind of dim half-consciousness, but that he did not do either good or evil. If he had a sinful life, it was a life without perversity. And his repentance, apparently childish, attained the grandeur of holy tears. He remained a child always; and a child whose natural goodness was better than its existence. Even by this he was the poet. Like all true poets, he spoke out the sincerity of his soul. His poetry is a cry of the soul. It is a song of faith, or a complaint; it is the free fancy of a being who is happy or who weeps. By a kind of art, involuntary, spontaneous, and yet refined and supremely delicate, he wrote exquisite little songs; and also the most serious, most Christian poems of this century. Victor Charbonnel. [The following poems by Paul Verlaine are reprinted by permission of Stone & Kimball, publishers.] CLAIR DE LUNE OUR soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, YOUR Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, That play on lutes, and dance, and have an air Of being sad in their fantastic trim. |